Pollution Solution : Activists Vow to ‘Bird-Dog Every Step’ of Santa Monica Bay Cleanup

Dorothy Green will never forget the summer day in 1985 that her brother phoned her with a troubling discovery.

Next to a popular bicycle trail, he had nearly stumbled across a drain carrying what appeared to be raw sewage into Ballona Creek. The fast-moving liquid was heading for Santa Monica Bay.

He told Green that, as he watched, the big drain suddenly brimmed with murky liquid, and a gust of wind spattered fine bits of foul-smelling material onto him.

If city officials could have picked a person to expose the strange occurrence, Dorothy Green might have been their last choice.

Green, one of the most vocal environmentalists in California, drove out to look for herself, then alerted state Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) and several of the city’s leading environmentalists.

“You could just see it,” Green said. “The stench was undeniable. The city was already in trouble for its track record on the bay, so all hell broke loose.”

The spill was one of seven such incidents in 1985 that took environmental agencies by surprise and shed light on the decay of the city’s sewer system. The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board fined the city $180,000, blaming the spills on outmoded pipes that had finally overflowed.

Since then, public pressure on the city to protect Santa Monica Bay--led by a core group of Westside clean-water advocates including Green, Hayden, marine biologist Rimmon C. Fay, the Sierra Club’s Nancy Taylor and others--has never let up.

In recent months, the activists have carved out a role as watchdogs of the effort to reduce bay pollution. The centerpiece of the effort is a $3-billion sewage system renovation, the most expensive public works project in city history.

Acting as Bird Dogs

“We are going to bird-dog them every step of the way,” Fay said.

On Feb. 19, U. S. Circuit Judge Harry Pregerson approved a settlement between the city and the federal Environmental Protection Agency to end the city’s decade-long practice of dumping sludge--highly contaminated, concentrated sewage--in the bay, a violation of federal law.

By the end of next year,, the city must stop dumping sludge, and by the end of 1998, it must build a system at its Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant to extensively treat all of the 400 million to 500 million gallons of waste water it pours into the polluted bay each day.

However, Pregerson turned aside the activists’ proposal for an independent monitor to police the city and dismissed their argument that the city be required to meet a much earlier deadline.

Nevertheless, Pregerson has given the activists status as friends of the court as the project unfolds, which means they can participate in the lawsuit settlement. As a result, they have easier access to city officials and records and are privy to some information even before the local media.

In a pointed illustration of that, the activists revealed last month that a fire had caused $360,000 in damage at Hyperion on Feb. 2. The fire hit a giant sludge-burner under construction. Work on the incinerator, which eventually will dispose of sewage solids now dumped in the bay, was set back by months, according to sanitation officials.

However, the city did not inform Pregerson or the activists about the fire until March 10, almost three weeks after the judge had accepted the city’s plan for renovating the sewers.

“I feel so betrayed,” said Ellen Stern Harris, an activist. “At the Feb. 19 signing of the agreement, the city showed us beautiful color slides of their work, the new construction, put on a real dog-and-pony show. But not one word about the fire.”

Maureen Kindel, president of the city’s Board of Public Works, said that because of tremendous time pressures and the often chaotic nature of their task, “information is just not getting out like it should.”

“It was even difficult for the board to get information on what had caused the fire, what it meant and how long (the project) will be delayed,” Kindel said. “We know our credibility with the public is terrible, and we are really working to overcome this very kind of thing.”

City Engineer Bob Horii said he waited until engineers had determined the extent of the damage, which was limited to a piping system that was too hot to be inspected for nearly a week. He refused to comment on criticism from activists, saying only that he “has no problems with their involvement” as friends of the court.

However, a private engineer who is familiar with the project said city officials are “absolutely horrified of Tom Hayden, the Sierra Club and all the rest. To the city, it is a them-versus-us routine, not a cooperative effort.”

The activists say they fear that the city’s long history of foot-dragging will continue.

“I wish I had better news to tell, but we do not believe that the city has the situation under control, and we fear that it cannot straighten its own house,” Fay said. “I fear things are going to get worse before they get better.”

Marine biologist Fay, a man more comfortable in a wet suit than a jacket and tie, sat in a Venice meeting hall three weeks ago, telling potential voters that he is running for Pat Russell’s 6th District seat on the Los Angeles City Council because he sees trouble ahead.

“When I look and see what’s going on around me, the development, the unbridled growth, the degradations to our environment--it is exactly the opposite of what I want here,” he said.

Fay insists that he is first and foremost a scientist. But admirers liken him to Ed (Doc) Ricketts, the marine biologist and visionary immortalized in John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row,” who urged a greater understanding of the sea as man’s key to survival.

“Rim Fay is our old man and the sea,” said Hayden. “He’s a man of impeccable integrity blessed by an incredible memory. . . . He knows who stood in the way when Santa Monica Bay was at stake.”

Urge Halt to Dumping

For three decades, Fay has urged local officials to stop dumping sewage off the coast.

His fears have been confirmed by the EPA, who sued the city for refusing to embark on extensive secondary treatment that removes 90% of particles, bacteria and toxins from waste water. The EPA says the city’s dumping practices have helped make the bay one of the most polluted in the United States.

“Rim has been in this forever, all by himself, just screaming his heart out,” Green said. “He lives in the sea; it is his ocean. I have such respect for that man.”

To Fay, the world below the waves is as important as the one with cars, apartment buildings and mini-markets.

Several times a month, he dons a wet suit, pulls a rubber mask over his silver-white head and plunges into the sea.

Collecting Marine Life

There, he collects marine life and fish. His company, Pacific Bio-Marine Labs, sells them for scientific research.

Fay says he sometimes lies awake at night, agonizing over worldwide environmental issues. He is burdened by a growing anxiety that some of the damage cannot be undone.

“The irreversibility of the global processes is terrifying to me,” he said. “One major world problem, one I just cannot put down, is deforestation--the loss of the tropical rain forest in Brazil, Africa, to make way for roads and buildings.

“We will see an increase in carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. And that’s global, that’s global.”

It is this holistic philosophy that fuels Fay’s anger over the city’s sewage project.

If he were in charge, he would throw out the $3-billion plan and abandon the 90-year-old practice of funneling sewage to the sea. (Under the city’s plan, sewage still will be dumped, but it will be markedly cleaner than previously.)

Fay and many leading scientists and academicians say that water reclamation is the forward-thinking answer to sewage disposal but that an unimaginative city bureaucracy refuses to view it as a solution.

In reclamation, microscopic bacteria and sewage particles are removed from waste water, making it nearly pure. This water is used by industry or for watering parks.

Such treatment is increasingly being used at city sewage plants, but officials have never embraced it as a panacea. They say it is too costly and creates a headache when the city looks for a place to haul tons of extracted sewage solids.

“The option of running waste through Hyperion to the ocean, throwing out precious water that we need here in Southern California, was a monumental engineering mistake that they have built upon and repeated for decades,” Fay said.

“Wherever the secret mind of the city lies, I can only hope it comes to realize that the problem is bigger than anyone thought.”

His protectiveness of the bay is inextricably linked to his memory of the way things used to be. At 57, he can conjure up a vivid memory of a hot summer day on the Venice Pier in the 1930s, when the older boys hurled bright pennies into the ocean and watched them wink and sparkle as they touched bottom beneath the clear waters.

“God, it was beautiful here then. How quickly we forget.” he said. “Imagine seeing the ocean bottom, our own Hawaii or Tahiti.”

With his simple, yet in some ways radical message, it was inevitable that Fay one day should link up with the likes of Dorothy Green.

Green, whose home-based office is stuffed with reports warning of viruses in the ocean and contaminated runoff from street drains, is viewed by many as the grand dame of the city’s current environmental movement.

A one-time housewife who found her political voice in the 1960s when her son had to register for the draft, she is now president of the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters and president of the countywide coalition Heal the Bay.

At her comfortable home in Westwood, multiple phone lines have been installed, and the back bedroom has been transformed into a composing room for Heal the Bay’s newsletter.

“My phone rings about every five minutes,” Green said. “Boy, could I use a secretary.”

Barry Groveman, a former city and county environmental prosecutor who sent hazardous-waste dumpers to jail, said Green’s discovery of sewage overflows “helped give the Los Angeles City Council the political will to do something about Santa Monica Bay.”

Frank Covington, a former water quality official at the EPA in San Francisco, said the activists “made a difference to public perception--the Rim Fays and Dorothy Greens took the story to the people. And public sentiment, especially in something this big, is no small factor.”

Mindful of the city’s track record, Green has joined Fay and others in calling for intense policing of the sewage renovation effort.

She fears that the new sewer project will not keep pace with the city’s skyrocketing development before it is completed and that under-treated sewage will continue to pollute the bay. The activists say a building moratorium is the answer.

“Growth and environmental problems are all related in people’s minds, so people who are sick of all this building are joining Heal the Bay,” she said.

‘Coming Out of Woodwork’

She said membership now includes 60 organizations, plus 900 individual members. “We have lawyers, film industry people, media industry people, they are just coming out of the woodwork.”

With two newsletters--the Sierra Club’s Waste Watchers and Green’s publication--the activists report on the bay to about 1,900 politicians, journalists, appointed officials, environmentalists and citizens.

Meanwhile, Green is planning a media blitz this summer to step up publicity about contaminated storm drains, which collect dirty runoff from street drains and then empty onto beaches from Zuma to Redondo.

“Starting on Memorial Day, we’ll be letting beachgoers know that swimming or picnicking near these storm drains can be hazardous to their health,” she said.

(County health officials have posted signs warning that drains that empty on the beach could be hazardous because of high bacteria readings. However, the county contends that no sicknesses can be linked to swimming near them.)

Members of Heal the Bay are recording case histories of dozens of swimmers and surfers who said they became ill after going in the water.

County officials are “saying you can’t link the diseases to any county liability, and I feel it’s a real cover-your-ass exercise,” Green said.

“The anecdotal stuff we’re beginning to collect is really horrifying--young people who got long fevers after swimming, a surfer with a sinus infection that required surgery and dozens of others.”

Beneath Nancy Taylor’s desk, cardboard boxes are filled with copies of letters from the city to the activists, from the activists to the EPA, from the EPA to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Taylor, of West Hollywood, has fought for tougher sewage treatment in Los Angeles, San Diego, Morro Bay, Santa Cruz, Oxnard and other coastal cities.

Trained by the Sierra Club to ferret out information from public sources, she is the activists’ soft-spoken but effective sleuth.

“I’ve learned that everything is politics,” Taylor said. “Politics, you know? The fear of how something might look if it gets out to the public. That’s made the difference between my getting an answer I need from a city engineer in a week or two, or my getting that information six months later.”

High Marks for Judge

Judge Pregerson gets generally high marks from Taylor and the others for granting them friends-of-the-court status. But she says she is still angry about his refusal to appoint an independent sewage expert to monitor the city.

“What is the big deal?” Taylor said. “If they are doing what they should, to the best of their ability, how could a monitor find fault with them? And if they aren’t doing the job right, they should welcome--oh, it’s so frustrating.”

She is looking into the city’s proposed contract with two private companies that will be given a powerful role in helping the Department of Public Works build the sewer system.

Her efforts to find out more about the contract “have been a nightmare,” she said. “We can spend the next 12 years demanding files and papers and public access to what’s going on. But what can we really do to them? Nothing.”

Kindel of the Board of Public Works conceded that city employees have been slow to open their files, but she said she is pressing for change.

‘So New to Us’

“It’s all so new to us, I think the city engineer’s office didn’t realize how open I wish to be with them (the activists),” Kindel said. “The engineers are working double-time on construction and reports, and they’re just so busy. It has not been by design.”

Taylor says the proposed contract with Jas M. Montgomery Consulting Engineers Inc. and C H 2 M Hill holds the companies to few, if any, year-to-year construction goals “that would keep their feet to the fire.”

She and other activists also speculate that the $3-billion cost will triple or quadruple before the job is done, and the increased price will be borne largely by taxpayers in the form of city bond issues and monthly sewage bills.

“If you didn’t think there were ways to build a $600 ashtray,” said Hayden, referring to cost overruns on military contracts, “wait until you see what a sewer pipe can cost.”

Kindel conceded that there are already “major cost overruns--it’s no secret and nobody’s hiding it. But we have no choice but to move forward and quickly.”

But Taylor is not satisfied. She is investigating a plan in which new development would bear more of the increasing costs.

“The residents of this town are getting a raw deal in being made to pay for all the new toilets flushing,” she said. “If you think pay toilets are controversial, wait until you see what people say when they get their sewage bills in the year 1990.”

The activists are increasingly looking to Hayden to help them right the wrongs they say have been committed against the bay.

A long-time environmentalist, Hayden recently introduced seven bills designed to clean up the bay, investigate the effects of its pollution on people and give a more powerful voice to clean-water advocates. Last year, three Hayden bills involving waste and toxins in the ocean became law.

“Los Angeles is producing a reaction to its past indifference to the environment, to all the growth without an environmental awareness,” Hayden said.

“It has really flared up over Santa Monica Bay, in contrast to places like Monterey Bay, which is almost as polluted but where people aren’t drawn together by abuse from developers and an uncaring government like they are here.”

Cliff Gladstein, a field deputy for Hayden, said the city’s appearance of withholding information about the Hyperion fire has compounded mistrust.

“We aren’t talking just any agency,” Gladstein said. “We are talking about an agency that is responsible for the disposition of 400 million gallons of human waste, which they empty into one of the most used beach areas in the world.”

Scientists and government officials who have dealt with Hayden say his knowledge of ocean pollution is impressive.

He can cite studies from the EPA, the state, and the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project that revealed the presence of tumors in fish, toxic chemicals in the sewage muck on the ocean floor and high levels of DDT in fishermen who habitually eat bottom-dwelling fish they catch off local piers.

“Tom really does his homework,” said Jack Anderson, director of a city- and county-funded research project that primarily studies the effects of sewage on the bay.

‘Best Friend’

“Tom is by far our best friend in terms of all the public officials in the state,” Green said. “Last fall he invited everyone from all the sides of the ocean problem to his ranch--100 people from scientists to academicians to politicians to public interest people. I think he knew how badly we all needed to talk.”

A key measure in Hayden’s package of bills would give residents of Santa Monica the right to create a Santa Monica Bay Authority, while another would establish marine environment research centers in Northern and Southern California.

The proposed authority could hire private researchers to study pollution, develop its own demonstration projects to fight pollution and be represented by the city at hearings of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

“They would not be the usual under-funded environmentalists fighting agencies who don’t listen,” Hayden said. “They would have the backing of the city attorney of Santa Monica, and that is clout.”

Hayden said he believes the most difficult environmental battle yet to be waged is the one to protect the ocean.

And he thinks Los Angeles, with its clash between flourishing development and reawakened environmental concerns, will be the battleground.

He noted that contributions to Proposition 65, the state clean-water initiative, came overwhelmingly from Southern Californians, not from residents of the environmentally active Bay Area or other parts of Northern California.

“Of the $1.7 million we raised to push Proposition 65, $1.6 million came from south of the Tehachapis,” Hayden said. “That’s how worried Southern California is about water, and the bay is a part of that.”

No matter how earnest the fight, however, most scientists agree that it will be many years before Santa Monica Bay recovers.

“I think of it as an entire generation of young people who will not be able to splash in the bay with abandon, whose mothers who will be fearful of letting them spend hours in the surf,” Green said.

“When I think of what natural beauty we have here, and what we’ve done to it, I want to cry.”