Sewer Spills--a Political Peril for Bradley?

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley has always prided himself on being master of the unglamorous details of city government. When he is criticized for lack of flash, his defenders reply that he is more interested in improving city services than in making eloquent speeches.

But in the last few weeks, one of the most unglamorous facets of municipal life--sewers--has been causing Bradley nothing but trouble as old, overtaxed sewer lines have overflowed and added to the pollution of Santa Monica Bay.

The mayor’s frustration with the overflowing sewers reached a peak last Tuesday, when he learned about the worst spill, which had occurred four days before. Nobody on his staff had told him that 100,000 gallons of raw sewage had flowed into the bay the preceding Saturday.

The potential for political trouble was clear. Bradley has been trying to strengthen his environmental record in preparation for a possible race next year against Gov. George Deukmejian. His decision early in the year to support Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s proposal to drill for oil in the Pacific Palisades drew environmental criticism, and some of the same Westside critics have accused his Administration of failing to protect the bay.

Changes in Monitoring

The latest of the three recent spills angered Bradley, and his outrage was quickly followed by a shake-up in pollution monitoring in the mayor’s office.

One of the mayor’s oldest and most trusted aides, Anton Calleia, will now be notified of spills night or day, and he will tell the mayor. Calleia assumed the role on his own initiative after Maureen Kindel, president of the Board of Public Works and another top Bradley adviser, failed to inform Bradley of the spill.

“I did not notify anyone else,” said Kindel, who heads the city department in charge of garbage collection, sewage disposal and other services that keep the city running. “I am at the last of the chain of command for notification.”

“There was a slip-up in notification,” Calleia said. “I have reached an understanding with the Bureau of Sanitation that whenever such a spill occurs, I am to be informed immediately. As far as Maureen is concerned, she is to be informed as well. But I want to make sure there is no slip-up.

“I’d rather err on the side of redundancy (in notification procedures) than leaving the mayor in the dark. He obviously found out about it (the last spill) quite late and certainly there was no formal notification.”

Bradley did not hear of the spill until Calleia was told of it at a meeting of a city clean water committee. “I immediately told the mayor and told him the engineers were recommending (construction of) holding tanks (to prevent more spills), and we should go with it and the mayor agreed.”

State Board Notified

Nor was the public informed. Following the usual procedures, city sanitation officials immediately notified the state Regional Water Quality Control Board and the county Department of Health Services. County officials sampled the water at adjacent beaches and found “all samples were well within the standards for ocean recreational waters,” according to Norman Michiels, county health’s acting environmental management deputy.

“Samples were taken for three days (afterward) and those samples have all proven within standards,” he said. As a result, warning signs were not put up on the beaches and the public was not notified, he said.

After last Saturday’s spill was disclosed, however, Kindel ordered the city to make its own public spill warnings. From now on, the Bureau of Sanitation will notify the press whenever there is a spill, a public works spokesman said.

The Santa Monica Bay sewage problem, full of political danger for Bradley, has been brewing for a long time and is difficult to solve.

2 Key Aspects

It has two aspects. One is a sewage system that city officials say is inadequate. A particular problem is in the western part of the city, where a huge $90-million sewer line running from the La Cienega Boulevard-Rodeo Road area to the city’s Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant on the bay has been long planned, but never financed. A major sewer bond issue that would have financed that--and other projects--was voted down in the mid-1970s and the City Council declined to put a similar measure on the ballot in 1978. The council is now considering ways to finance sewer expansions.

The second troubling area is the Hyperion plant, near Los Angeles International Airport. Hyperion, which now does partial secondary treatment of sewage, is being pushed by the federal government to meet federal standards of full secondary treatment.

Bradley and the Los Angeles City Council have long fought this, seeking exemptions from federal clean water standards.

But under heavy pressure from environmentalists and Santa Monica Bay-area political activists, including fellow Democrat Assemblyman Tom Hayden, Bradley recently joined the fight for funds to completely upgrade Hyperion.

Hayden said Bradley continued to defend Hyperion’s partial secondary treatment system because he and the City Council followed the advice of city engineers who believed Hyperion was adequate.

“He was persuaded by the people with an engineering mentality rather than a public health consciousness,” Hayden said. “Their point of view has been pervasive in Los Angeles for 20 years. That point of view is the ocean is a safe receptacle for sewage.”

Meanwhile, the Bradley Administration, aware of the potential political harm of bay pollution, is trying to find funds for improvement of the Hyperion plant and the sewage lines.

Kindel outlined a major sewage line construction plan recently, but council members balked at any financing plan that would result in a tax increase. Meanwhile, Kindel and Deputy Mayor Tom Houston are negotiating with the state for state and federal grants for more work at Hyperion.