County Declares Ballona Unsafe After New Spill

The county Health Department has declared swimming and surfing unsafe in Ballona Creek and along a quarter-mile section of Playa del Rey after a 35,000-gallon spill of raw sewage on Friday.

Richard H. Rinaldi, director of environmental protection for the department, said that signs have been posted warning people to avoid contact with the possibly contaminated water in the area.

The signs will remain in place until the department fully evaluates tests of bacteria dumped into the creek during four sewage overflows from the Los Angeles city sewer system at the end of Jackson Avenue near Jefferson Boulevard.

Rinaldi said that evaluation of the tests will start today. He said he did not know how long they will take.

Rinaldi declined to speculate on the kinds of diseases swimmers could catch in the water, except to say that the ailments are likely to be associated “with upset stomachs, those kinds of illnesses.”

He added that the signs will not be removed until the city Bureau of Sanitation provides evidence that the sewage spills have been stopped.

Until July, the bureau maintained that the spills occurred only in stormy weather, when storm waters infiltrated and overloaded the sewer system. The four most recent spills, beginning with one July 12, occurred during dry weather.

Harry M. Sizemore, assistant director of the Bureau of Sanitation, said that his agency has raised the standpipe at the Jackson outfall a foot to stem the spills.

“We are hoping that this will stop the overflows, although I am not certain that it can,” Sizemore said. “We cannot raise the pipe any higher without causing the sewage to overflow in the streets.”

According to Sizemore, bureau policy says that it is better to dump excess sewage into the ocean than into city streets.

He said that it may take until mid-September to stop the overflows entirely. At that time, the bureau’s new Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in the Sepulveda Basin in Van Nuys should be activated, which will relieve strain on the city’s old sewer system.

The plant is expected to reclaim between 20 million and 50 million gallons daily from a sewage system that funnels an average of 420 million gallons daily to the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Facility in El Segundo.

Increased Surveillance

The Bureau of Sanitation also has increased its surveillance of the Jackson Street overflow. Sizemore said that sanitation workers will be posted at the facility from noon to 4:30 p.m. daily. When the spills occur, workmen shovel chlorine into the water to disinfect fecal matter before it reaches the ocean.

Sizemore said that his bureau’s testing after Friday’s spill showed the bacteria count to be below state standards for safe water.

The health department’s Rinaldi did not dispute the accuracy of the bureau’s testing, but said that it may not be taking place close enough to the shoreline.

“The testing is done one-half mile from the shoreline,” he said. “We have directed the bureau to test one-quarter mile from the shoreline and 100 yards south of the Ballona Creek Channel.”

Nelson Wong, senior water resources control engineer for the Los Angeles Regional Water Control Board, said that his organization has sent a letter to the city directing that the spills be stopped immediately.

“The spills are a direct violation of state water quality rules,” Wong said. “While the letter said ‘immediately,’ we recognize it is going to take the city some time before the spills are stopped.

“I would not say that I am satisfied with what the city is doing, but they at least have started to do something to solve the problem.”

Wong said he is continuing to obtain information to determine whether his agency will fine the city up to $10,000 a day for each discharge of raw sewage into the creek.