Bradley Accuses Governor, Prison of Pollution

Calling Gov. George Deukmejian California’s “biggest polluter,” Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley charged Saturday that a state prison in Tracy is dumping 300,000 gallons a day of inadequately treated sewage into the San Joaquin River.

For the last five years, Bradley said, the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy has been discharging improperly treated sewage that makes its way to “the water taps of California homes.”

A corrections official acknowledged that the sewage treatment plant at the overcrowded prison had been plagued with problems but denied that 300,000 gallons of untreated sewage flow into the river each day.

“We had a problem for a period of time,” said Rod Blonien, undersecretary of the Youth and Adult Corrections Agency. “Our information is that we have cured the problem and we have made numerous improvements and we’ll be making some more.”

Bradley and Deukmejian are expected to square off again this year in a repeat of their 1982 campaign for the governorship, although neither has announced his candidacy.

Campaign-Style Speech

In a campaign-style speech to the Planning and Conservation League, Bradley said, “At the correctional institution in Tracy it has been discovered that for five straight years, every day, they have been pouring into the San Joaquin River 300,000 gallons a day of improperly treated sewage.

“Now that’s got to make the governor the biggest polluter in the history of this state. Five years is long enough for him to have taken some action to clean it up,” he said.

Actually, Deukmejian has been in office a little over three years.

Bradley acknowledged that the City of Los Angeles was recently fined by the Regional Water Quality Control Board for dumping raw sewage into Santa Monica Bay but questioned why no similar fine has been levied against the state.

“We had one incident of 100,000 gallons of sewage that spilled into the bay and we paid a $150,000 fine for that without any reservations,” Bradley said. “Here is a man who is responsible for putting 300,000 gallons of that kind of sewage into the San Joaquin River every day for five years straight.”

In response, Deukmejian spokesman Kevin Brett said Bradley should be worrying about problems closer to home.

“We suggest that the mayor spend his time in Los Angeles manning the city’s sewage system instead of traveling throughout the state in hopes of finding a sewage problem to divert political attention away from his own mismanagement of Los Angeles’ sewage system.”

Cited in August

The prison at Tracy was cited in August by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board for a variety of problems in the sewage treatment system, leading to continued violation of standards for the discharge of sewage.

Blonien said the water board has approved a plan to correct the flaws in the sewage system, which is overtaxed by a prison population that is 200% of the prison’s intended capacity.

“There is not 300,000 gallons of inadequately treated sewage flowing into the river a day,” Blonien said.

Bradley said he has asked the Senate Toxics Committee to investigate the sewage discharge. In a letter to the committee, Bradley’s office suggested that the prison be shut down until the sewage problem is solved--an idea that would compound the Deukmejian Administration’s problems in coping with prison overcrowding.

“It sounds like that plant is not working at all,” Bradley said in a press release that accompanied his speech before the statewide environmental group. “That river flows in to the California Aqueduct and out the water taps of California homes.”