Test of Ocean Dumping Gets Congressional OK

A $27.5-million Orange County research project into the environmental impact of dumping concentrated sewage into the ocean overcame a major hurdle Thursday when Congress approved legislation that would clear the way for the study’s initial step.

Approval of the experimental project was contained in an amendment to the $22-billion Clean Water Act, passed unanimously Thursday by the U.S. Senate and forwarded to the President for his signature.

The bill’s future is unclear, however, because the White House has objected to the high cost of the eight-year program intended to continue cleanup of the country’s waterways and help construct more local sewage treatment plants.

The Orange County amendment in the bill allows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to issue a permit to the Sanitation Districts of Orange County for a five-year experiment in ocean disposal of sewer sludge as an alternative to burning or costly burial in landfills.

The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Glenn M. Anderson (D-Hawthorne) at the request of five Orange County congressmen, also establishes stringent guidelines for the research project’s operation.

Anderson co-authored the original Clean Water Act in 1972 and is the ranking Democrat on the House Public Works and Transportation Committee, which oversees the act.

As proposed by the sanitation districts, the study would investigate the impact of discharging treated sludge into the ocean at depths never before attempted in an effort to minimize its concentration and, therefore, any harmful effects it might have.

The proposal calls for a 24-inch pipeline to extend eight miles out to sea off Huntington Beach. The pipeline would deliver treated sludge at depths ranging from 1,000 to 1,400 feet. Discharge at those depths would promote initial dilution of the solids, according to Blake P. Anderson, the districts’ director of operations.

“Caltech has already done some computer modeling for us on how this plume would dissipate from those depths,” Anderson said Thursday.

A majority of the project’s costs--an estimated $20 million--would go for construction of the pipeline as well as pretreatment facilities on shore, according to Anderson, who said the operation would handle about 50% of the districts’ sludge disposal demands. Operating costs for the districts-sponsored project will run an estimated $1.5 million annually, he said.

Continuous Monitoring

The Anderson amendment requires continuous monitoring of the sludge line project by an independent panel of marine experts from outside of the districts, who would then report to Congress and the EPA every six months on the study’s progress.

According to the districts, the members of the evaluation panel would be drawn from such institutions as Caltech, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

Additionally, the amendment calls for the EPA administrator to terminate the project in the event that environmental degradation occurs, and it limits the research to a single five-year term.

The districts’ Anderson said an environmental evaluation of the discharge site and EPA’s processing of the permit application is expected to take as long as five years. Construction of treatment facilities and the pipeline would take another three years.

Other Provisions

Should results of the study show that ocean dumping is not environmentally feasible, Anderson said, the districts would have to close down the treatment facilities and pipeline and shift the load back to alternative air or land disposal operations that would be running concurrently with the coastal project.

Whether the pipeline would be shut down once it’s built and operating is a key question raised by opponents of the project.

“I don’t see them investing millions in this project and then just closing it down,” said Lorraine Faber of Huntington Beach, a longtime environmental activist. “What I do see is them asking for an exemption, saying they can’t walk away from it economically.

“If they ever get it out there, it will be impossible to put a plug in it,” she said.

Faber said that even though the pipeline will discharge far out to sea, prevailing onshore currents could bring some of the sewage back to the coast.

“My feeling is that we’ve got 17 miles of ocean bathing beaches that are in very healthy condition,” she said. “The reason it (ocean dumping) is prohibited nationally is that some of this stuff started coming back to the coast in the East, where they had been doing it (ocean dumping of sludge) for years.”

Threat to Fishing Area?

Also, Faber pointed out, the sludge might pollute a fishing area located near the mouth of the proposed pipeline.

A similar objection, as well as concerns about possible introduction of increased levels of PCBs into the ocean, were raised by the local chapter of the Sierra Club, according to Dori Denning, a group spokeswoman in Los Angeles.

Opponents also had pointed out that the planned project was opposed by EPA’s western regional officials in San Francisco.

The agency’s objection, however, was based more on the policy involved than the merits of the project itself, and reflected a lack of support rather than outright opposition, according to Dick Coddington, deputy director of water management.

“It seemed to us that this was not the time to get involved in supporting something like that, when we were having the problems we are in Los Angeles,” Coddington said, referring to the federal agency’s protracted battle with the City of Los Angeles over dumping sludge into Santa Monica Bay. The city recently was fined $600,000 by the EPA.

While Denning and Faber indicated there was strong opposition among environmentalists to the proposed experiment and a letter-writing campaign, a spokesman for Rep. Anderson said they had received only a single letter opposing the project, which came from the Los Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club.

Presidential veto weighed. Part I, Page 14.