San Diego County may have dodged a $2.9 million bullet Tuesday (May 31) when it agreed to pay a $25,000 fine and construct three replacement projects for the 118,000 square feet of porous pavement — paid for with state grants — torn out at the county operations center in Kearny Mesa.

If the replacement projects aren't completed, the county will have to pay $700,000 in additional fines per project. As part of the settlement, the county agreed to do $2.1 million worth of projects at the Edgemoor Skilled Nursing Facility in Santee and Lindo Lake and Cactus county parks, both in Lakeside, that have to be finished by June 2018.

Attempts to get comment from the county on Wednesday did not elicit results.

In May 2013, during a routine check of construction at the operations center, Regional Water Quality Control Board inspectors discovered that the county was tearing out pavement that was paid for out of $2.9 million in Prop 13 and Prop 40 bond funds in 2006 and 2007. A condition of the funding is that projects stay in place for at least 20 years.

The grants were for installing porous pavement and the centralized treatment components of a model operations center demonstration. The proposed project contemplated test areas that included asphalt reinforced with polymer and a deeper reservoir to contain roof runoff as well as parking-lot drainage, according to Leslie Laudon at the Sacramento office of the State Water Control Board.

"They said they took it out because it wasn't working," Laudon said. "They should have contacted us first."

After nearly two years of negotiations, the county and state worked out an agreement to do projects aimed at catching and filtering stormwater runoff, which Laudon said was the best possible way to resolve the conflict — with the possibility of being fined $700,000 per project if they are not completed, according to the settlement.

The county agreed to install 3310 square feet of porous pavers at Edgemoor with catch basins to treat about 31,000 gallons of runoff when it rains. At Lindo Lake, the county will be creating 2600 square feet of bioswales; at Cactus County Park, 3600 square feet of porous pavers and bioswales to treat up to 149,000 gallons of runoff during each rainstorm.