EPA to Study Santa Monica Bay Waste for Superfund Aid

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that it will conduct a preliminary assessment of pollution in Santa Monica Bay that could lead to the bay’s designation as a federal Superfund cleanup site.

The decision by EPA Administrator Lee M. Thomas in Washington came after three California congressmen last October urged the EPA to place the bay on the Superfund list, which would qualify it for federal cleanup funds.

In calling for Superfund status, Reps. Mel Levine, Anthony C. Beilenson and Henry A. Waxman, all Los Angeles-area Democrats, had cited spills of raw sewage into the bay from the Los Angeles sewer system, dumping of cyanide and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the bay during the early 1940s and the disposal of wastes there from an El Segundo oil refinery. They said pollution in the bay poses “extremely serious . . . environmental and health hazards.”

Levine said Monday that Thomas’ decision was “a positive first step toward” designation of the bay for Superfund status.

A preliminary assessment normally takes three months and basically involves a search by the EPA of existing state and local agency records and data to determine whether further study is warranted. If it is determined that it is, then the EPA will begin a site investigation that will include the collection of water samples. The bay would next be ranked for eligibility of cleanup funds, according to the severity of the problem.

Normally, Superfund monies are used to clean up abandoned landfills and land-based toxic dump sites, although there is precedent for placing a body of water on the Superfund list. For example, Waukegan harbor, north of Chicago, was placed on the Superfund list after highly toxic PCB deposits were found.

EPA spokesman Terry Wilson said Monday, “The fact that this is a bay complicates the situation, and it is a lot more difficult to do.”

A finding that pollution in the bay is serious enough to warrant further studies by the EPA could prove politically embarrassing to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a Democrat who may run for governor next year against Republican Gov. George Deukmejian. Environmental issues are expected to figure prominently in such a campaign.

Slight Effect Claimed

The city, which discharges between 360 and 420 million gallons of sewage a day into the bay, has been insisting for years that it does not need to substantially improve treatment of the sewage because the effluent has minimal effects on the bay.

Of that amount, only 100 million gallons receives full secondary treatment--removal of enough chemicals and bacteria to make waste water usable for irrigation--before leaving the Hyperion sewage treatment plant in El Segundo. Instead, most of the sewage is treated just enough to remove solids before it is discharged through an outfall pipe five miles offshore.

But Bradley, in an abrupt about-face, last September endorsed full secondary treatment of the sewage. The city has estimated that it would cost $160 million to upgrade its sewage treatment plant.