What is involved if the Point Loma plant upgrades to a Secondary Treatment level?
Additional land would be necessary for the most cost effective design of Secondary Treatment facilities; this means either on the adjacent Navy or National Park Service lands at a cost of about $1 billion and the loss of 30 acres of natural coastal habitat; Or The City would have to build the Secondary Treatment plant on the current plant site as a “second story”. That cost would be about $1.5 billion due to added complexity of the construction and the fact that the current plant must stay in operation during any construction. In either case, once constructed, the Secondary Treatment plant will cost an additional $40 million per year to operate.
