City Will Pay $625,000 to End Bay Sewage Dumping Suit

In the culmination of a nine-year battle over the dumping of raw sewage into Santa Monica Bay, Los Angeles on Thursday agreed to pay a $625,000 fine by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for violating the Clean Water Act and promised to meet new deadlines for upgrading its trouble-plagued Hyperion sewage treatment plant.

The city also agreed for the first time to spend $3.3 million to assess and reduce the effects on Santa Monica Bay of pollutants discharged from storm sewers. The storm sewer project is in addition to $2.3 billion in previously planned improvements and operation costs over the next 12 years at the Hyperion plant at Playa del Rey and other treatment facilities.

In announcing the settlement, the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington said the $625,000 civil penalty was one of the largest ever collected from a city under the federal Clean Water Act, enacted in 1972.

“We believe that the civil penalty is appropriate in view of the substantial impact on public waters of this sort of pollution,” said Assistant Atty. Gen. F. Henry Habicht II of the Land and Natural Resources Division.

“Municipalities have a strong obligation to make certain their publicly owned treatment works are operated according to the law,” Habicht added.

A year ago, the city was fined $180,000 by the state Regional Water Quality Control Board after discharges of raw sewage into the bay from Ballona Creek, which empties into the bay at Playa del Rey.

The settlement announced Thursday was reached with the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is outlined in an amended consent decree filed in federal court in Los Angeles. It is scheduled to become final in 30 days after a period for public comment.

The Department of Justice first sued the city in 1977, and in 1980 obtained a consent decree that required the city to stop its discharges of 4.24 million gallons of sewage sludge a day into Santa Monica Bay by last Feb. 15.

The decree said that the city failed to meet this deadline and also failed to complete construction of a sludge incineration facility known as the Hyperion Energy Recovery System.

The plant discharges about 420 million gallons of treated waste water a day through a sewer outfall located about five miles offshore. Only a fourth of that amount undergoes secondary treatment, a process that results in greater water purity.

The fine and settlement come at a time when Mayor Tom Bradley, the Democratic nominee for governor, has been characterized by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian as “the biggest polluter in California.”

Deukmejian on Thursday called the consent decree “another chapter in a miserable nine-year story of gross mismanagement, failed leadership, and a concerted effort by the mayor to evade provisions of the federal clean water law.” Deukmejian added, “The people of Los Angeles finally have paid the heavy price of Tom Bradley’s embarrassing failure to manage his city’s sewage.”

Mayor Campaigning

There was no direct comment Thursday from the mayor, who was on a campaign swing through Northern and Central California. However, Bradley’s deputy campaign press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, said, “There have been problems with the city’s sewer system which the mayor has taken action to correct. It’s going to be completely refurbished. By contrast, the governor’s record on toxic waste has been pathetic. He has been unable to adequately identify the problem, much less take the steps necessary to correct it.”

For years the city delayed making improvements to the sewer system, in part because it hoped that the federal government would relax ocean discharge requirements and grant an exemption from costly secondary treatment requirements. By contrast, the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts spent millions to comply with the Clean Water Act.

More recently, Los Angeles has embarked upon a massive $1.3-billion upgrading of its systems. The amended consent decree holds the city to what Habicht called a “strict timetable for improvements and compliance.”

Los Angeles City Engineer Robert S. Horii said that the city would either meet or beat the deadlines.

Terms of Order

Under terms of the decree, Los Angeles must cease all discharges of sludge, which is concentrated sewage, by Dec. 31, 1987. In the meantime, it must continue to reduce discharges of sludge into the ocean by trucking 2,000 tons a month to a disposal site in Chino, where it is used to make compost for crops. In another six months, that must be increased to 5,000 tons a month, or 15.7% of the total.

No later than June 30, 1989, the Hyperion Energy Recovery System incineration facility is to be operational.

By Dec. 31, 1998--10 years after the original 1988 deadline--the city must assure full secondary treatment of all waste water (as opposed to sludge) discharged into Santa Monica Bay. Horii noted that “a substantial number” of cities have also been unable to meet the 1988 Clean Water Act deadline.

Horii said it would cost $1.3 billion over 12 years to undertake all of the improvements planned, including major new facilities at the Hyperion Treatment Plant, Terminal Island Treatment Plant and Tillman Water Reclamation Plant at Victory Boulevard and the San Diego Freeway. Improvements are also planned to the East Valley Interceptor Sewer, which feeds into the Tillman plant, and to the North Outfall Relief Sewer at Rodeo Road and La Cienega Boulevard, which feeds into Hyperion. There are also extensive plans to replace and rehabilitate sewer lines.

Additional Costs

Operational costs will add another $1 billion for a total of $2.3 billion.

Los Angeles taxpayers may have to foot the entire bill for the improvements. The Reagan Administration is attempting to phase out federal grants under the Clean Water Act that in the past have paid up to 90% of the costs for new sewer systems.

Horii noted that the Los Angeles City Council recently approved $700 million in revenue bonds to help underwrite the improvements. Revenue bonds do not require voter approval.

He said the $3.3 million needed to study and reduce the discharge of pollutants into the bay from storm drains will be raised by the city’s sewer charge, which was recently increased by 5% to $5.51 a month for the average single-family home.

In addition, beginning this weekend, he said, the fee for new sewer connections could jump 78%. That would mean that a new single-family home hooking up to the system would pay $846 instead of $475.