Labor’s deals stir dust-up in construction
By: Helen Gao

Photo by Eduardo Contreras

San Diego Councilman Kevin Faulconer examined Pump Station N in Mission Beach yesterday. The stairs lead to a part of the pump station that is supposed to remain dry, but flooded three times in last week’s storms, Faulconer said.

San Diego Councilman Kevin Faulconer examined Pump Station N in Mission Beach yesterday. The stairs lead to a part of the pump station that is supposed to remain dry, but flooded three times in last week’s storms, Faulconer said.

San Diego’s storm-water department added extra pumping power when Pump Station N failed during last week’s storms, leading to street flooding in Mission Beach and Pacific Beach.

The heavy rains that pounded San Diego County last week exposed a major problem at a key pump station in Mission Beach: It doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.

Portions of Mission Beach and Pacific Beach flooded three times last week because the station’s four pumps could not adequately collect storm-water runoff and dump it into Mission Bay, city officials said. The city had to haul in additional pumps to keep the water flowing.

“This needs to be fixed and it needs to be fixed really quickly,” Councilman Kevin Faulconer said yesterday during a news conference at Pump Station N near Santa Clara Point Community Park. “There’s real consequences when the system doesn’t work.”

The winter storms last week dumped more than 3 inches of rain at Lindbergh Field and more elsewhere across the region, causing power outages, mudslides, downed trees and street flooding. In low-lying areas some residents could not get to their homes and cars were stranded in watery streets.

More rain is expected as early as today.

Faulconer, who visited the pump station several times last week, said he does not know how much it will cost to fix the problem. He said he is working with the public works and storm-water departments to come up with short-term and long-term solutions.

“We need to know what the city has to do to redesign this so it works because it didn’t work last week,” Faulconer said.

The station is at Bayside Walk and Santa Clara Place and is the main runoff collection point in the beach neighborhoods, said Bill Harris, spokesman for the Storm Water Department. Two pump stations operate nearby and feed into Pump Station N.

Harris, who joined Faulconer at the news conference, said the station was overwhelmed. Pumps broke down. One could not be restarted.

“We’re determining exactly what was flowing into that pump station and why it didn’t keep up and what it would take to install something that could take the amount of water that came in,” Harris said.

Mission Beach residents said they are tired of their streets flooding during heavy rains.

Andy Voelz, 28, used sandbags to stop water from coming through his front door. Voelz described the pool of water that formed at Pacific Beach Drive and Mission Boulevard as thigh-high.

Deanna Lorenzen said the intersection was impassible.

“You couldn’t drive through,” Lorenzen said. “People had to do U-turns and turn back.”