Lawyers for the California Water Resources Control Board have rejected a complaint by the City of San Diego. The city wanted the board to intervene in its dispute with local regulators over the cleanup of groundwater at Qualcomm Stadium.
When Kinder Morgan Energy completes the cleanup, the city hopes to pump up to 3 million gallons of drinking water a day from the aquifer. The city wanted Kinder Morgan to accelerate the cleanup by re-injecting the half-million gallons it extracts every day back into the aquifer. Local regulators refused the request. So the city asked the state to intervene. But lawyers for the state water board have now reused.
Now Richard Opper, an independent lawyer for the city says the next step may be to bypass the lawyers and appeal directly to the state board.
"One of the things the city may do is try and make sure that the policy makers hear what's going on. Because we feel very strongly that what's happening here is the waste of a lot of water that should be used for the city's residents and not poured out to the ocean.
The deadline for the clean-up is 2013.
