Demolition of tanks to bring lagoon into full view
by Angela Lau, UNION-TRIBUNE staff writer
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Publication: San Diego Union-Tribune, © 2007
Date published: November 8, 2007
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Students' work part of San Elijo project
For the first time in decades, visitors to the west end of San Elijo Lagoon will have an unobstructed view of the ecological reserve.
An old sewage treatment plant that blocked the sight line is being demolished this week.
The San Elijo Lagoon Conservancy commissioned the $86,000 project. It wants to restore the lagoon, which divides Encinitas and Solana Beach, to its natural state.
But the nonprofit organization is not going it alone.
The agency has enlisted students from three elementary schools in Rancho Santa Fe, Solana Beach and Cardiff to help with interpretive signs that will be installed on the site.
The first-to sixth-grade students were asked to write about the importance of the lagoon and why the two concrete, graffiti-covered treatment tanks had to go. The interpretive signs will carry the students' messages.
“This is in the center of the lagoon and near a popular trail head” at the end of North Rios Avenue in Solana Beach, said Doug Gibson, the conservancy's executive director and principal scientist. “It has limited people from using the trail. There's graffiti everywhere. It has become a trash haven and a place for vagrants.”
Tuesday morning, a work crew driving an excavator began tearing away at the tanks, slab by slab, kicking up a storm of dust and scattering a hive of bees.
Once the structures are leveled, which is expected to happen by the end of this week, Gibson said the conservancy will remove invasive plants that have sprouted nearby. The organization has been wanting to clean them out, but nearby residents wanted the plants there to shield the unsightly tanks.
The sewage facility was built in the 1940s to replace the old-fashioned way of disposal – dumping sewage wholesale into the 885-acre lagoon, Gibson said.
The tanks provided a rudimentary separation of water from the sludge, said Chandra Collure, public works director for Solana Beach.
The untreated water was dumped into ponds in the lagoon and was absorbed into the ground, Collure said. The sludge was disposed elsewhere.
In 1964, with more stringent environmental regulations on the books, the plant was closed, he said.
Its replacement was a modern-day sewage treatment facility on the lagoon's north bank, operated by a sanitation district that consists of Solana Beach and Cardiff. The facility cleans up the effluent before discharging it into the ocean.
Last year, when Solana Beach needed to replace the sewer pipe that runs through the lagoon to the treatment facility, it bought an easement from the conservancy, paying $86,000, which paid for this week's demolition.
Gibson, however, does not want future generations to forget what happened here.
His organization will use the materials developed by the students, who took field trips to the lagoon recently, to design professionally made interpretive signs, Gibson said.
All that may sound rather dry. But the children are thrilled, their teachers said.
At Rancho Santa Fe Elementary, a student wrote from the viewpoint of a bird, thanking the conservancy for giving back its natural home, teacher Stacey Halboth said. Others thanked the conservancy for getting rid of an eyesore.
At Skyline Elementary School in Solana Beach, students were asked to imagine the future of the lagoon, and many said they envisioned a wetland where no animals are at risk of being driven to extinction and where no cleanup is needed, teacher Shannon Applegate said.
Cardiff Elementary School teacher Jan Hamilton said her students are drawing a lagoon for the interpretive displays.
“Oh my gosh, they have learned so much!” Hamilton said. |
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