Oceanside's city council has adopted a resolution announcing its intention to issue up to $300 million in tax-exempt bonds, opening the door to financing a major overhaul of the city's sewer system centered on retiring its oldest treatment plant. The La Salina Wastewater Treatment Plant, built in the late 1940s, is at the heart of the plan.
The resolution itself does not commit Oceanside to borrowing the full $300 million or to issuing any debt at all — it simply authorizes the city to pursue a potential bond issuance, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Any future bond issuance would require separate city council authorization, per Jill Moya, Oceanside's financial services director, who presented the plan to the council on Wednesday.
Moya said the city is also considering grants, loans and other financing methods for the sewer work, and the newly adopted resolution will support applications for that kind of financing. She told the council that Oceanside can tap funds already set aside for many of the projects now and reimburse itself later once other money becomes available, the Union-Tribune reported, adding that the city will need to issue bonds in years when capital spending outpaces its available cash balances.
Why La Salina Is Being Phased Out
City officials describe La Salina as inadequate to serve Oceanside's growing population, according to the Union-Tribune's reporting. Rick Robinson said deferred maintenance and growth create challenges for the city, underscoring the pressure on a plant that has been in service for more than three-quarters of a century.
The city's own project materials spell out the underlying problem in blunter terms: the facility has aged beyond its design life and requires modernization to meet current regulatory standards and accommodate future growth, according to the City of Oceanside. The proposed sewer work includes fully decommissioning La Salina rather than patching it indefinitely.
That decommissioning is not a simple shutdown. It requires constructing a new sewer lift station at the plant site plus a forced main line to pump raw sewage to the San Luis Rey Water Reclamation Facility. Wastewater flows will be diverted from La Salina to the existing San Luis Rey facility, per the city's water utilities projects page. The lift station replacement, dubbed the Buccaneer Lift Station project, is meant to swap the aging infrastructure at the La Salina property for a new, modern facility, the city says.
Target Dates and Recent Public Input
The Buccaneer Lift Station and broader project are part of the city's sewer work. Oceanside held a public information meeting about the project at Buccaneer Park in June, giving residents a chance to weigh in before the work advances further.
Separately, a draft Program Environmental Impact Report covering Oceanside's broader Sewer Improvements Project underwent a 45-day public review period from January 30 through March 16, 2026, per the city's planning department. City records also show that as of a February 2024 staff report, La Salina decommissioning efforts were already underway and expected to wrap within five years — with the city in the meantime approving a $72,042 purchase order for a headworks rag washer and compactor to keep critical equipment running at the aging plant.
The Rest of a 450-Mile Sewer Network
Oceanside's sewer system as a whole includes two wastewater treatment plants, roughly 450 miles of sewer pipelines and 33 sewer lift stations, according to the Union-Tribune's reporting. The other treatment plant is San Luis Rey.
The city also plans improvements to its sewer system's ocean outfall, which carries treated wastewater beneath Pacific Street at Buccaneer Beach and into the ocean.
How It Compares to Other Local Projects
Oceanside's wastewater ambitions extend beyond La Salina. The city has previously discussed decommissioning La Salina, expanding San Luis Rey and increasing recycled water production as part of its long-term infrastructure goals, according to The Coast News. A separate Oceanside wastewater project involving pipeline replacements and a new sewer lift station was expected to require the city to appropriate $94.2 million over five years, the outlet reported.
Other recent Oceanside sewer spending offers a sense of scale: the city paid $3.3 million in 2022 for a three-acre parcel at 333 Garrison Street for the El Corazon Sewer Lift Station, and a separate sewer conveyance and lift-station project saw a roughly $90.1 million contract amendment that pushed its total not-to-exceed cost to about $129.4 million, according to Citizen Portal. Just up the coast, the city of San Diego authorized its own issuance of up to $240 million in sewer revenue bonds on Nov. 18 to fund wastewater capital projects and refund older debt, Citizen Portal also reported — a reminder that Oceanside isn't alone in confronting the cost of aging sewer infrastructure.
