Other Cities Phasing Lines Out : Orange County Awaits OK of Sludge Pipeline

Dumping concentrated sewage, known as sludge, into the ocean may be in disfavor nationwide, but Orange County sanitation officials are awaiting federal authorization for a lengthy pipeline that would carry such waste matter into the Pacific Ocean off Huntington Beach.

The $20-million Orange County proposal was given a boost when Congress included authorization for the experimental project in an amendment to the revamped Clean Water Act passed two weeks ago. President Reagan has until midnight Thursday to sign or veto the $22-billion legislative package.

The pipeline controversy could end quickly if Reagan vetoes the Clean Water Act, which is thought to be a strong possibility because the White House has objected to the high cost of the eight-year program to continue cleanup of the country’s waterways and help construct more local sewage plants.

But while project backers hold their breath in hopes that Reagan will sign the controversial measure, debate rages over the advisability of dumping the potentially toxic sludge into the ocean.

The original Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, sought to end the piping of sludge into the ocean. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has opposed the planned eight-mile pipeline in letters to congressional leaders. And environmentalists point to two sludge dumps that are being phased out--one in New York and one in Los Angeles--as evidence that the Orange County pipeline should never be built.

“The law of the land is thou shalt not dump sludge in the ocean, but maybe Orange County has seceded from the union,” said Rimmon C. Fay, a marine biologist who runs a research and consulting firm in Playa del Rey. “Our problems with the ocean don’t begin with the ocean. They begin with what we take from the land and dump into the ocean. I think we’ve had enough of that.”

But backers of the plan say the original Clean Water Act rejected a necessary option for waste disposal without the proper scientific analysis.

They argue that population growth in urban coastal areas soon could outstrip sanitation districts’ capacity to deal with the subsequent waste. But by banning pipelines to discharge excess sludge into the ocean, the act eliminated a viable--and economically necessary--alternative, they say. Ocean disposal currently is estimated to cost a fourth of what it costs to haul and dump the sludge in landfills.

At the end of the Orange County pipeline “there will be a big, black nasty zone approximately five kilometers by two kilometers,” said Bruce Thompson, an environmental specialist with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project.

“What’s the alternative? People aren’t going to give up their toilets. . . . The big question is how much degradation is society going to allow to not have it (sludge) buried in their back yards,” Thompson said.

The proposal calls for a 24-inch pipeline to extend from a treatment plant at the mouth of the Santa Ana River to a site about eight miles out to sea. The pipeline would follow the natural slope of the ocean bottom and deliver treated sludge at depths of 1,000 to 1,300 feet of water.

The pipeline and sludge treatment plant will cost an estimated $20 million to build, said Blake P. Anderson, director of operations for the County Sanitation Districts of Orange County, the agency sponsoring the project. Estimates are based on what the project would have cost to build in 1982.

Research, monitoring, operation and maintenance would add another $12.75 million to $15.25 million over the life of the five-year project, Anderson said, and the entire cost of the project would come from the sanitation districts’ general reserves. An estimated 500,000 gallons of sludge--half of the sanitation districts’ current output--would be discharged from the pipeline daily.

Concern was expressed by the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project--a group funded by the Southland’s sanitation districts--because one study suggests that ocean currents would create a band of sludge at a depth of about 350 meters along the slope of the ocean bottom instead of dispersing the treated waste matter. The research project study concluded that the sludge band would be most concentrated at the mouth of the pipe and travel about five kilometers to the north and south, parallel to the coastline.

“Nobody knows if it’s not going to be a problem,” Thompson said. “It’s never been done on this coast in this deep water. This (amendment to the Clean Water Act) is to make a scientific project, to get information so we can make an intelligent determination” about whether ocean piping of sludge is good or bad.

But environmentalists question the building of a sludge pipeline off the Orange County coast, when similar projects are being phased out nationwide.

In Los Angeles, the city’s Hyperion sewage treatment plant currently discharges large volumes of sludge into the troubled Santa Monica Bay. Experts say the plant’s seven-mile-long sludge line is only one part of the bay’s complex pollution problem, which gained public attention in 1985 with the announcement of diseased local fish and warnings against their consumption. The EPA has ordered the city to close down the Hyperion sludge line by Dec. 31, 1987.

On the East Coast, notorious sludge dumping in the New York Bight will be phased out by the end of 1987. Barges have dumped sludge 12 miles off the coast of Long Island for years, and in 1976, a huge mass of sludge moved inland, causing major damage and closing beaches. Experts blamed the dump as a cause of the ecological disaster. Such dumping remains legal, but the area is being closed in favor of a much deeper experimental site 106 miles offshore, officials said.

Discharge techniques and oceanography in New York and Los Angeles differ greatly from the proposed Orange County project, but environmentalists here argue that the issue is the same--the dumping of sludge into the ocean.

EPA officials say they have made clear the agency’s concerns with the proposal. Richard A. Coddington, deputy director of EPA’s water management division on the West Coast, said, “ . . . we think there are enough known problems in the ocean and there are other alternatives to dealing with sludge than putting it in the ocean.”

But proponents of the plan argue that it is unclear whether dumping sludge in landfills or burning it are any better environmental solutions than ocean dumping. And they note that landfills are becoming increasingly scarce as land is developed in urban areas.

In any case, the plan’s backers stress that it is only a research project. If it is found to cause too much harm, the sludge line will be closed or modified.

“We’re not just throwing stuff in the ocean,” said Norman Brooks, one of the plan’s architects and director of the Environmental Quality Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. “We have the ability to predict what will happen to it. I am confident that no one’s ever going to see it. . . If you say you should not put it in the ocean because of toxics, you should also say don’t bury it because of toxics or don’t put it in the air because of toxics. The deep ocean is probably the safest place to have tiny residuals.”

If the act is vetoed, the pipeline’s future is uncertain. “Our general manager will consult with our board of directors and determine what the next step is,” said Anderson, head of the sanitation districts.