Ocean Pollution Reduction Act II

Floor Speech

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Mr. PETERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

For 40 years, the city of San Diego has treated the region's sewage through the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant. It is a chemically enhanced primary treatment facility that treats wastewater to a level that can be discharged into the ocean without harming the environment.

The Clean Water Act generally requires sewer systems to implement a secondary level of treatment. However, scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have consistently said that forcing San Diego ratepayers to pay billions of dollars to upgrade the Point Loma facility to secondary treatment would be a waste of money because the enhanced advanced treatment the plant currently provides, combined with its 4-mile-long outfall, causes no harm to the ocean environment. In fact, the construction of a new facility along the coastline could do more harm than good. For these reasons, San Diego has been allowed to avoid building a new facility through a Federal waiver process at a cost of millions of dollars every 5 years.

Water has always been in short supply in southern California, yet, during my first years on the San Diego City Council in the early 2000s, I was one of only three council members to support blackwater recycling to improve the reliability of our regional water supply.

Even though all water is recycled, our opponents at the time dubbed it ``toilet to tap.'' Now, however, we recognize that historic droughts, combined with the shortage of melting snow, have made our water supply shortage a permanent challenge for the West. And today, San Diego's proposed water recycling plan with the more accurate moniker, the ``pure water program,'' has widespread support from among local elected leaders, environmental advocates, and State regulators.

In 2019, I introduced the Ocean Pollution Reduction Act II, or OPRA II, to support the dual goals of increasing fresh water supply and reducing pollution output to the ocean.

Under OPRA II, the city of San Diego must demonstrate that the pure water program can produce 83 million gallons a day of water by 2036. This is an estimated one-third of the entire city's drinking water needs. Over the same period, the program is expected to reduce pollution discharge from the Point Loma plant by over 100 million gallons.

Pure water will still require substantial investment from San Diego ratepayers; however, this bill replaces the complex and expensive secondary treatment waiver application with a simpler and more environmentally effective process if the city meets stringent water recycling milestones.

OPRA II has been a decades-long labor of love among the city of San Diego, its regional partners, and State and Federal Government. It will deploy cost-effective technology and will protect our region's water sources, technology that could one day be deployed by other vulnerable communities to help address water shortage issues.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I thank my colleagues.

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