Warning Signals : L.A. Coastal Waters in Big Danger

The first whispers of trouble came in 1984, when scientists set out to collect samples of uncontaminated bottom fish from along the Los Angeles shoreline.

None could be found.

In 1985 it erupted. Warning signs went up at the piers: Eating locally caught fish may be hazardous to your health. The warnings kindled a debate over ocean water quality that focused attention on one of the largest sources of marine pollution on the West Coast--the City of Los Angeles’ massive Hyperion sewage treatment plant in Playa del Rey, which pours a never-ending river of waste water and toxic chemicals into Santa Monica Bay.

Before long, sewage was headline news. Scientists were attacking scientists. Legislators were calling for $1-million fish studies. Environmentalists were donning brown costumes to create a symbolic “human river” of muck around Los Angeles City Hall.

Then came a series of unexplained overflows from Hyperion into Ballona Creek, sending raw sewage into the ocean.

“All hell broke loose,” one marine scientist recalled.

Now, for perhaps the first time, a populace known for its suntans, Jacuzzis and laid-back, rose-colored outlook has begun asking hard questions about what’s going into Los Angeles’ coastal waters:

What’s all this waste water doing to our health? To our beaches? To the fish we eat? How have years of partially treated sewage flows, discharged by both the city and the Los Angeles County sanitation districts, changed marine habitats and animal populations? And what will it take to restore them?

‘Beautiful People’ Attitude

“We have enormous pollution problems . . . and we just haven’t really attacked it,” said Harold Puffer, a USC pathology specialist who early last year sounded the first warnings about contaminated fish. “It seems like we have the ‘beautiful people’ attitude--you just float along in this land of beach-tan blondes and it’s all wonderful . . . and we really don’t have any problems.”

Los Angeles’ coastal waters provide a rich marine environment, blessed with abundant sunlight and nutrients and teeming with more than 700 kinds of fish, crustaceans and other sea animals.

But into that environment flows a huge volume of partially treated sewage--enough each day to fill the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum. The waste water pours into the ocean from three sources: two City of Los Angeles plants--Hyperion and a small one on Terminal Island--and a Los Angeles County plant in Carson that pipes effluent to an ocean outfall off the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

In addition, Hyperion currently discharges large volumes of concentrated sewage, known as sludge--a practice federal regulators have ordered stopped by February.

Some researchers argue that the ocean can handle the wastes. Relatively deep salt waters off Los Angeles are believed to minimize the risks of viruses and to help sweep away toxic chemicals. It has even been suggested that treated waste water is good food for many marine animals, providing a bountiful source of organic nutrients.

In recent years, however, research has revealed what many scientists consider to be serious warning signals:

- In November, Puffer released a pilot study showing significantly elevated levels of DDT and PCBs--two powerful toxic chemicals--in the blood of people who frequently eat fish taken from Los Angeles waters. The levels were three to 10 times higher than the national average.

- Scientists looking for potentially dangerous industrial chemicals in ocean-bound sewage have identified more than 100 different compounds, including at least half a dozen known or suspected carcinogens. The same scientists have found that many compounds concentrate in ocean sediment and bottom fish, and some may move up the food chain to man and other higher animals.

- Studies done since 1984 have shown that fish from Los Angeles waters contain higher levels of DDT, PCBs and other toxic chemicals than those found in Seattle’s heavily polluted Commencement Bay, the largest West Coast site designated for toxic cleanup under the federal Superfund program.

- A study by Johns Hopkins University has found that a type of human bacteria widely used as a barometer of sewage pollution, fecal coliform, is ineffective in predicting the presence of disease-causing viruses. Viruses in human waste are known to cause meningitis, respiratory disease, infectious hepatitis, encephalitis, fever, diarrhea and vomiting.

The concerns have attracted the attention of federal officials, who now are considering Santa Monica Bay for the Superfund program. A decision is expected early this year.

In addition, researchers have challenged old assumptions about treated sewage and human health. Waste water from the city and county sanitation plants generally has met California ocean discharge standards for fecal coliform bacteria, used as an indicator of virus counts.

But low coliform levels are not enough to ensure public safety, Johns Hopkins researchers concluded. They found that swimmers from New York, Boston and Lake Pontchartrain, La., developed virus-related illnesses, including vomiting and fever, even when the bacteria could not be detected.

Regulatory agencies, according to EPA scientist Brian Melzian, plan to soon replace the coliform health standard with one based on measurement of a type of human bacteria considered to be a more accurate indicator of viruses.

Melzian said there has been no public outcry over virus-caused health problems along Los Angeles beaches despite the series of recent sewage spills. However, no significant local virus studies have been conducted, and some scientists suspect that at least some dangers exist.

Dr. John Skinner, an internist who has fought for improved sewage treatment in Orange County, said cases of virus-caused illnesses may go unreported to health authorities simply because people do not attribute them to the ocean swimming.

East Coast waste-water studies have isolated viruses that survived a year after being discharged, Skinner said. Moreover, he said, it is likely that the heavy doses of chlorine used to combat raw sewage spills in Los Angeles may actually kill fecal coliform--the warning sign--without harming many of the disease-causing agents.

“From a medical standpoint, we have a lot more respect for viruses than for bacteria,” which are easily destroyed by ocean exposure and chlorine treatment, Skinner said.

Toxic chemicals are a more hotly debated issue. Years of laboratory studies, ocean-floor surveys and sewage-monitoring efforts have been aimed at answering the suddenly stormy political questions: How big are the problems? How far should sewage treatment go? How many millions of dollars should be spent to cut down on chemical pollution in the ocean?

The work has yielded information, but not answers. Scientists now know, for example, exactly what chemicals are contained in sewage, and at what volumes those chemicals spew into the ocean.

They know that some pollutants enter the food chain, that some may be acutely poisonous to sea animals, and that others may inflict on those animals chronic ailments such as tumors, fin deterioration and reproductive problems.

They also know that years of sewage discharging have changed areas of the ocean floor, piling up chemicals and organic sediments, driving away many small crustaceans and starfish and spawning large populations of tiny worms that feed on sewage wastes.

Missing, however, are the essential details: Which chemicals cause the harm? In what doses? How many edible fish may be public health hazards? To what degree has marine life dwindled?

“How much is out there, how much produces a problem--these are areas we know little about,” said Dr. Jack Anderson, newly selected director of the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, an organization funded by waste-water-discharging agencies, including Los Angeles city and the county sanitation districts, to study marine pollution.

Risks are known for a few chemicals, like DDT and PCBs, and they are suspected for others. But for each compound, and for each organism, the exposures and dangers may vary widely.

According to some scientists, the overall dangers to human health and marine life from waste-water discharge are significant. Dave Brown, a research project chemist, said new research has painted a grim health picture for those who regularly eat contaminated sport fish caught near Los Angeles County.

Cancer risks for those consumers may be dozens of times the acceptable health standards, Brown said, even though most local sport fish contain legal amounts of DDT, PCBs and other chemical contaminants.

“I don’t think the public really understands what the risks are from consuming sport fish,” he said.

But other researchers, like former research project director Willard Bascom, argue that the risks to human health and marine life are minimal, overplayed by environmentalists and others who react emotionally to the issues.

“Here and there, there’s no doubt the bottom is contaminated,” Bascom said. “The question is, ‘Does the contamination do anything to living animals, including man?’ My answer is ‘Yes, it does something--but not very much.’ ”

The chances of the contamination leading to cancer in humans is “very tiny indeed,” he said.

“Is there a problem in the coastal waters? I think not.”

Compounding the scientific arguments is the sheer size and complexity of the offshore environment. Just because DDT and PCBs are abundant in white croaker, a fish cited by health authorities, doesn’t mean that one can find the same levels in mackerel, according to scientists. Similarly, evidence that some fish and marine animals are harmed by chemical wastes does not mean that others are also damaged.

“You may have two species of clams sitting together in (oil-contaminated) sediments,” Anderson said. “If one feeds from the water column, it is not as affected as another that makes its living by poking its siphons down into the sediments.

How It Happens

“The question is how they make their living, and how the pollutants get to them.”

The ocean can be seen as a vast Rubik’s Cube of interrelated pieces. Scientists say it is difficult to isolate the effects of waste-water discharging in a marine environment that also is subject to influences from seasonal currents, temperature changes, natural offshore oil seeps, cyclic population shifts and human activities, particularly fishing.

Rough statistics have shown marked declines in various types of marine life over the years. For example, the population of white sea bass, once an abundant sport fish, has dwindled to less than a tenth of what it once was. And sea bass counts have not increased despite recently enacted fishing regulations designed to protect the species.

“It just hasn’t rebounded like it should,” said Herb Frey, a state Fish and Game supervisor.

But no one knows whether the cause is pollution, continued over-fishing, loss of kelp-bed habitats or destruction of natural breeding grounds to marina construction.

“It’s probably the combination of a lot of things,” Frey said.

A variety of problems found in waters off Los Angeles County have been attributed to DDT, despite a 1972 federal ban on the potent, nearly indestructible pesticide.

Heavy DDT discharges from the county treatment plant during the 1960s and ‘70s were blamed for the disappearance of kelp forests off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, for fin rot and lip tumors in bottom-feeding fish, and for population reductions that once threatened the California brown pelican, a bird that feeds on fish. DDT was even blamed for the deaths of Los Angeles Zoo birds that were fed contaminated fish.

Continuing Problem

Today, DDT remains a huge environmental problem here, according to most scientists. A study completed in November by Dr. Donald C. Malins, a toxicologist with the federal Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Center, found DDT concentrated in the tiny worms and clams that tend to live near waste-water outfalls off Los Angeles County. Malins examined such organisms after removing them from the stomachs of white croaker, the popular sport fish.

“It’s obvious . . . (that contamination) is entering the fish through the food chain,” Malins said.

Bottlenose dolphins found off the Los Angeles County coast are also known to be contaminated. In fact, scientists reported last year that DDT levels in those dolphins, which feed on the white croaker, are among the highest in the world--five to 10 times higher than in similar animals found near Japan and elsewhere. The most contaminated specimen taken by scientists was a young dolphin born nine years after DDT was banned, said Henry Schafer, a scientist with the coastal research project.

“Somehow, that DDT is getting into animals that weren’t even around when the heavy discharges were being made,” Schafer said.

Scientists are not sure whether the DDT problem is disappearing. In recent years, levels of the pesticide in waste water have dropped to a trickle, and replanting and breeding efforts have helped restore the affected kelp beds and brown pelican population.

Bascom said high DDT levels in the food chain are the legacy of long-ago dumping whose effects will eventually disappear.

Nothing to Be Done

“How long shall we go on beating our breasts about something that happened in 1971?” he asked. The DDT dumping was “terrible,” he said. “Everybody knows it was terrible. But I can’t say how we can do anything about it today.”

At the same time, however, scientists have found high levels of the pesticide in mussels in the Channel Islands--evidence that pockets of the chemical have moved. Mike Martin, director of the state Mussel Watch program, said the finds have puzzled scientists who expect pollutants to diffuse in ocean currents.

“We have a whole bunch of catching up to do to find out where these compounds are sequestered in the ocean,” Martin said.

EPA scientists, meanwhile, said they are disturbed that DDT continues to show up in waste water. They speculated that at least one related compound may chemically break down into DDT, and that DDT residues may still line the walls of some large sewer lines.

Another DDT?

“We are very, very concerned,” EPA oceanographer Phil Oshida said.

Some scientists also said more studies need to be done on other families of chemicals. Will there be another DDT? Most scientists said that that pesticide may have been a special case; and yet PCBs, a banned group of chemicals once used widely as electrical insulators, have characteristics similar to DDT and are more carcinogenic. Scores of other chemicals have not been fully tested for effects on human health and marine life.

The EPA’s Melzian said particular concern has been expressed over the cancer-causing byproducts of oil combustion, which also are present in waste water. Until recently, those chemicals were only crudely measured by dischargers, lumped into a category called “oil and grease,” along with harmless cooking fat from restaurants.

“The jury is still out on which (chemicals) are the bad actors,” Melzian said.

Group Not Independent

The scientific debate over the dangers of ocean discharging has been complicated by the fact that for 15 years, the vast bulk of the area’s research has been conducted by the coastal research group. Unlike other large West Coast cities--Seattle, Portland, San Diego--Los Angeles does not have a major marine-study laboratory that runs independently of the sewage agencies.

Operating with 20 scientists and housed in an aging Long Beach warehouse building, the coastal research project’s efforts have been marred by internal controversy and criticism from environmentalists and others who question whether the project can be truly objective, given the fact that its funds come from the sewage agencies.

Last spring, Bascom, who contends that waste-water discharging benefits some forms of marine life, drew criticism from a top aide who said Bascom had withheld information about the severity of toxic contamination in Santa Monica and San Pedro bays. A scientific panel assembled by Bascom later cleared him of the charges.

Frequent Witness

The 69-year-old Bascom, who retired over the summer, had been a frequent witness for local agencies seeking relief from the more stringent provisions of federal water pollution laws.

Those laws attempt to limit discharges of all types of chemicals and viruses into the ocean by requiring full secondary sewage treatment--a process now provided only on a partial basis by the city and the county sanitation districts. Some waste water discharged by the two plants still receives only primary treatment, a simpler, less efficient process.

In November, the city was denied a waiver from the full secondary requirements. The sanitation districts are expecting a decision on a similar waiver sometime this year.

Meanwhile, however, the county has sharply increased the portion of its waste water that receives secondary treatment, resulting in measurable changes on the ocean floor environment. Near the two county sanitation district outfalls, scientists have noted decreases in the area of ocean floor where changes in marine life are evident. The disturbed area has been reduced to only a fraction of what it was seven years ago.

Bascom has argued that the price for full secondary treatment--estimated at $500 million for the city--is not worth the small benefits to human health and the marine environment. Other researchers suggest that secondary treatment is a reasonable requirement, given accumulating evidence that ocean disposal of partially treated sewage can seriously affect marine life.

“Anything we put out there is going to have some effect,” one scientist commented. If the aim were to completely ensure that no contamination of the ocean environment took place, he said, “we’d have to shut off the (sewage) outfalls.”

DUMPING IN THE BAY

The fledgling city of Los Angeles began dumping its raw sewage into Santa Monica Bay in the 1890’s, replacing a simple screening plant with the monolithic Hyperion Treatment Plant in 1950. In response to the suburban boom, the county Sanitation Districts began dumping partly treated sewage off Palos Verdes in 1937. Today, the city plant in Playa del Rey and the county plant in Carson pour more than 700 million gallons of treated sewage offshore each day, together constituting one of the largest ocean-bound rivers in California.

L.A. County Sanitation Districts’ plant

Dumps 360 million gallons of waste water a day off Palos Verdes Peninsula. Of that, 200 million gallons receives secondary treatment.

City of Los Angeles Hyperion Plant Dumps between 360 to 420 million gallons of waste water a day, plus 4.5 million gallons of concentrated sewage sludge, into Santa Monica Bay. Of the total, 100 million gallons receive secondary treatment.

DEGRADED ZONE: Of 75 kinds of life that normally dwell in the fine bottom sediments, only a handful remain. Many fish and creatures like sea urchins have disappeared from mud flats poisoned with hydrogen sulfide and other chemicals. The area is dominated by Capitella capitata worms, the “rats of the ocean.” A few pollution-resistant fish like Dover sole eat the contaminated worms, taking in chemicals that can move up the food chain to humans.

CHANGED ZONE: Contaminated muck is less pronounced than in the degraded zone, and more types of marine life can be found. But many tiny crustaceans and other animals are driven out by ever-falling sewage particles, giving way to clams and worms that eat from below the sea floor. The zone is dominated by the pea-sized Parvilucina clam. The county’s changed area off Palos Verdes has shrunk as the result of improved sewage treatment.

UNCHANGED ZONE: Coastal waters and sediments are home to more than 700 types of fish, crustaceans and bottom life. The most common bottom dweller is the tiny brittle star. Fish that thrive include the California tonguefish and yellowchin sculpin. Even here, pollution has had its effects--in what was believed to be a clean area off Malibu, bottom fish have been caught whose bodies are contaminated with DDT and PCBs, chemicals once dumped in large quantities.

OIL AND GREASE So-called “aromatic hydrocarbons” in everyday oil and grease are among the least studied pollutants. They are formed when carbon or petroleum is burned. Some, like benzopyrene, are carcinogenic. Oil and grease coat the floor near the outfalls, and are believed to have contributed to decline in kelp, abalone and clams which cannot attach to grease-coated rocks.

BIOCHEMICAL OXYGEN DEMAND (BOD) The ocean’s natural oxygen is used up when organic particles are eaten by hungry bacteria. As oxygen is depleted, fragile bottom-dwellers are driven away. In the absence of oxygen, toxic “underwater mudflats” filled with poisonous hydrogen sulfides are created at the end of both the city and county districts’ outfalls.

SUSPENDED SOLIDS Sewage solids act as a carrier for chemicals, metals and viruses. Particles diminish natural light, which kelp and marine life need. As solids settle, they create a muck in which many marine animals cannot survive. Pollutants that bind to solids have been linked to failed embryo development, fin rot, parasite infestations, poor growth and the disappearance of some marine life.

CHLORINATED HYDROCARBONS (DDT, PCBs, pesticides) These are carcinogenic to lab animals. Even in minute quantities, they persist in the environment and in body tissue. They “bio-magnify” as they move up the food chain. High levels of DDT and PCBs have been detected in some bottom fish, and in dolphins and sportfishermen who consume large numbers bottom fish.

HEAVY METALS (Zinc, copper, chromium, lead, nickel, cadmium)

Bottom fish and worms accumulate heavy metals from sediments. In extremely high concentrations, heavy metals can kill marine animals, a rare occurence. In lower concentrations, metals such as chromium, cadmium and lead have been linked to poor growth, reproductive failure and sensory problems in marine life.

EFFECTS ON MARINE LIFE Pollution from sewage has affected marine life at all levels: Fish not driven from contaminated areas feed on creatures that remain, and humans eat the fish. These are effects on representative animals and plants.

LIFE IN THE WATER COLUMN WHITE SEA BASS, a large predatory fish, has diminshed greatly in recent decades. The possible causes: pollution from sewage, heavy fishing and destruction of natural habitats caused by marina construction.

BOTTOM FEEDERS WHITE CROAKER, a bottom feeder, is the most contaminated fish in Southern California. It contains high levels of banned DDT and PCBs that are present in sewage. Bottom-feeding fish pick up chemicals as they burrow for food, and have been found to suffer from rotting fins, poor growth and reproduction and parasitic disease. Health officials warn that eating a lot of white croaker may create an elevated cancer risk for humans.

LIFE ON THE BOTTOM KELP beds, which once covered 1,500 acres on the Palos Verdes shelf, disappeared during the 1960s and 1970s as DDT and sewage solids poured into the ocean. That contributed to the loss of abalone and fish that depended on kelp. Replanting and improved sewage treatment have brought back about 800 acres of kelp.

BRITTLE STAR, a starfish relative, is considered a barometer of ocean-floor health. Although it thrives in cleaner areas, its numbers drop sharply near sewage outfalls. In the degraded zone at the end of the city’s sludge outfall, it has been driven away completely.