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Board committee backs SFPUC emergency repair of Islais Creek force main with reduced authorization
Summary
The Budget & Finance Committee approved an SFPUC emergency declaration allowing an emergency bypass and repairs to a leaking 36-inch force main under Islais Creek, endorsing a BLA-recommended amendment to reduce authorization from $5,000,000 to $4,912,000 and forwarding the item to the full Board with a positive recommendation.
The Budget & Finance Committee on Thursday endorsed an emergency declaration from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to repair a leaking 36-inch force main that crosses Islais Creek, forwarding the measure to the full Board with a positive recommendation as amended.
Michael Tran, a project manager at the SFPUC, told the committee the Booster Pump Station pumps final effluent from the Southeast Treatment Plant into San Francisco Bay and that the 36-inch force main was confirmed to be leaking after staff discovered a leak on Oct. 18, 2018. "The 36 inch force main was confirmed to be the leaking of the pair that crosses Islas Creek," Tran said during his presentation.
Tran said the leak presents risks of permit noncompliance under the plant's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit and that SFPUC staff declared an emergency on Oct. 22 to enable immediate action. He described an emergency bypass design that would install a temporary 42-inch pipeline to float on the creek bed, an effort estimated to take about nine months and originally scoped at a not-to-exceed $5,000,000 construction authorization. He identified Kennedy Jenks as the designer and Power Engineering as the contractor teams preparing materials and staging.
The Budget Legislative Analyst, Sevin Campbell, reviewed the project's budget materials and recommended reducing the emergency authorization by roughly $88,000 to $4,912,000, saying the budget in the report supports that amended amount. The committee accepted the BLA amendment and the motion to forward the item "with a positive recommendation as amended," taking the motion without objection.
SFPUC staff emphasized that a permanent replacement project for the force mains — two proposed 54-inch HDPE pipelines with an engineer's estimate of approximately $38.7 million and an anticipated construction completion in 2023 — remains the long-term solution to avoid future emergency repairs. As Tran put it, the permanent replacement is intended "to mitigate the future needs for emergency declarations." The committee did not record a roll-call vote; members took the recommendation without objection and sent the amended emergency authorization to the full Board for action.
The committee's action is procedural: it endorses the SFPUC emergency declaration with the BLA's budget adjustment and directs the item to the Board of Supervisors for final decision. The full Board will have the formal authority to adopt the amended emergency authorization and direct SFPUC contracting for the bypass work.
