Plans for Sewers Aimed at Curbing Pollution of Wells

The Los Angeles City Council is considering a package of ordinances and sewer construction projects aimed at curbing chemical pollution of public water wells in the eastern San Fernando Valley by forcing businesses there to abandon private waste disposal systems.

The measures are directed at the estimated 3,700 industrial and commercial businesses and apartment complexes in the Valley that still rely on septic tanks or cesspools instead of city sewers to dispose of wastes.

It is “shocking that there are so many people doing business that aren’t connected up to sewers” in the Valley, said Councilwoman Joy Picus, who represents portions of the Valley.

About 3,000 of these firms continue to use ground disposal systems even though sewer lines pass their property. Roughly 700 other Valley businesses do not now have access to sewers.

On Friday, the council is scheduled to take up a draft ordinance that declares continued reliance on private disposal systems “by commercial and industrial uses . . . to be a threat to the quality of the ground water and to the public health.” The ordinance essentially would give the 3,000 establishments with access to sewers one year to hook up.

Companion Measure

A companion measure would authorize city officials to deny building permits for new commercial or industrial structures on Valley lots not served by sewers. Neither ordinance would apply to private homes or to apartment buildings of fewer than five units.

Councilman Howard Finn, who represents part of the East Valley, predicted that the draft ordinances will get prompt action. “There’s no tolerance over here anymore for hazardous materials being dumped into the ground,” he said.

A sewer construction program will involve installation of 122 individual lines to serve the estimated 700 Valley businesses that do not have access to sewers.

The $3.7-million project--to be financed mainly by assessments on the affected businesses--will add 11 miles of mains over the next seven years to commercial and industrial areas from Tujunga in the northeast Valley to Woodland Hills in the southwest, according to maps provided by the city Department of Public Works.

North Hollywood Priority

However, the work schedule calls for sewer segments to be built first in industrial sections of North Hollywood and adjacent areas, where wells operated by the city Department of Water and Power supply about 15% of the Los Angeles drinking water supply. Water from the wells is distributed mainly to customers south of the Santa Monica Mountains rather than in the Valley.

Abandonment of ground disposal systems and installation of sewers were among the recommendations of a 1983 report on chemical pollution of the Los Angeles wells, and of wells in Burbank, Glendale and La Crescenta. The report, prepared by the DWP, also called for creation of a hazardous-waste collection system for small East Valley businesses that may be illegally dumping chemicals to avoid high disposal costs. This proposal is still being studied by the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation.

The 1983 report showed that of 109 wells operated by water utilities in the East Valley and adjacent areas, nearly half contained concentrations of toxic solvents in excess of state health advisory limits. These findings have prompted California and the federal Environmental Protection Agency to put the Los Angeles-Burbank-Glendale well fields on the state and federal Superfund lists of toxic sites that qualify for cleanup funds.

The most common contaminants are trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene--or TCE and PCE. These solvents, widely used in dry cleaning and metal-degreasing operations, have caused cancer in test animals. Although there is no proof that they cause cancer in humans at the low levels typically found in drinking water, health officials say a person who drinks such water over a lifetime may have a slightly increased risk of getting cancer.

Use of Wells Halted

The ground-water problem has forced the DWP to stop using about a dozen of its 77 Valley wells in which contaminant levels are well above the state advisory limits of five parts of TCE per billion parts of water and four parts of PCE per billion parts of water. Other wells that exceed the limits by lesser amounts are being mixed with cleaner supplies to dilute solvent content below recommended levels.

The problem has caused worse headaches for smaller water utilities that have less ability to blend. Burbank, for example, has had to quit using eight of its 10 wells, forcing it to rely more heavily on water purchased from the Metropolitan Water District.

Officials say the use of ground disposal systems could be one cause of the problem, along with spills and tank leaks over several decades and deliberate dumping of chemicals in alleys and backyards to avoid disposal fees. Although it is illegal to discharge untreated chemical waste into private sewage systems, officials say the prohibition is almost impossible to enforce and may be routinely violated by some firms.

Requiring sewer hookups clearly will not affect pollution already in the wells or in underground plumes of water seeping slowly toward those wells. The EPA is expected to provide $1 million from the Superfund program for a study to pinpoint the underground plumes and to devise ways to clean them up.

By contrast, the sewer program is meant to reduce the chance that current waste disposal will make things worse. The city must “take all the reasonable measures we can to protect” its ground-water supply, said Laurent McReynolds, assistant chief engineer for the DWP’s water system.

No Clear Explanation

There is no clear explanation, other than poor planning, for the development of polluting industries near water supply wells--particularly industries that were not even served by sewers.

“I think nobody was really concerned that it would create a problem,” McReynolds said. It was assumed that “the ground would purify just about anything.” It turns out that some compounds that “get under the soil . . . don’t degrade at all.”

The sewer initiatives also illustrate how environmental cleanup is often a matter of shifting pollution from one place to another in the hope of lessening the impact.

Most of the sewage that the 3,700 firms have been putting in the ground instead will flow to the aging and problem-plagued Hyperion sewage treatment plant in El Segundo, which discharges about 425 million gallons of treated waste per day into Santa Monica Bay. Hyperion provides only primary treatment--the most limited kind--for about three-quarters of the waste. The city last week agreed to pay a $30,050 state fine resulting from recent large spills of raw sewage from the overloaded plant into Ballona Creek, which flows into the ocean at Playa Del Rey.

Public works officials point out, however, that the new sewer hookups will be accompanied by capacity and treatment improvements in the sewer system. For example, the new Tillman sewage treatment plant in the Sepulveda Basin, designed to treat 40 million gallons of sewage per day, is expected to start operation this fall. Moreover, a new city incinerator that will generate electric power by burning sludge from Hyperion that now is dumped into the ocean is expected to go on-line next year. Another planned improvement at Hyperion will increase from about one-fourth to two-thirds the amount of sewage getting secondary treatment before discharge into the bay.

Enforcement Plans

Under terms of the proposed sewer hookup ordinance, those failing to comply with an order to connect could have their water service shut off. The city attorney could also file civil or criminal charges against them. Businesses would be given a year to abandon their private disposal systems and tie into the sewer, but the deadline could be whittled to 30 days in the case of malfunctioning private systems.

The draft ordinance law also would allow businesses to seek a variance. A variance could be granted in a case of “extreme” hardship in which continued use of a private system would not harm water quality, according to the proposed law.

Sewer construction is not scheduled for completion until 1991, according to a work schedule prepared by the Department of Public Works’ Bureau of Engineering. However, the schedule shows that the highest priority lines near polluted East Valley wells would be built within about two years. In a series of motions over the last several months, the council has authorized the Bureau of Engineering to begin design work and initiate assessment proceedings on some of the priority segments.

The bureau estimates that the 11 miles of new sewer mains will cost slightly more than $3.7 million in 1984 dollars. Of this amount, about $2.6 million would be charged to affected businesses, while the city would pay the remaining $1.1 million. Bob Van Ark, an engineer with the sewers section at the bureau’s Valley district office, said the city’s share includes expenses that cannot be charged to the businesses, such as certain planning and survey costs and the portion of lines that run between properties rather than past them.

At a total assessed cost of $2.6 million, the 700 businesses would be charged an average of about $3,700. Before the individual segments are built, property owners will have a chance to contest their assessments at a hearing before the City Council.

“I haven’t seen any resistance,” Van Ark said. But he added: “We haven’t come to the point of having a protest hearing yet, so we don’t know what’s going to come out of (the) neighborhoods.”