Mix-Up Cited for Failure to Warn of Sewage Spill

Swimmers at Venice-area beaches were exposed to high levels of bacteria last weekend after the biggest sewage spill in many years went unpublicized, Los Angeles city and county officials acknowledged Friday.

Bacteria levels were back to normal by midweek and no risk from the spill was expected this weekend at Santa Monica Bay beaches.

City sanitation officials said last Saturday morning’s spill at the Venice Pumping Plant sent about 2.4 million gallons of raw sewage into a lagoon in the affluent Marina peninsula section, where seawater enters the Venice canals. The spill was the largest since the federal government began its crackdown on city waste water-processing practices in the late 1970s. The sewage flowed out the Marina del Rey channel and contaminated beaches north and south of the channel.

The public was not alerted apparently because of a series of mix-ups by engineers in the city Bureau of Sanitation and inspectors in the county Department of Health Services.

Posted Signs

City workers who discovered the spill calculated that only 300,000 gallons of sewage had flowed into the lagoon. They told a county health department inspector, who believed the spill was contained and posted warning signs only on the closest canal, officials said.

Water samples taken by the city showed the high levels of bacteria last Saturday, but the city’s analysts blamed the readings on a storm the previous night, city officials said Friday. Heavy rains wash debris in the storm drains down to the sea and sometimes cause elevated bacteria levels on the beach.

State law allows 1,000 coliform bacteria, which is assumed to indicate fecal contamination, in a 100-milliliter sample of water. Samples with 24,000 coliform per milliliter were found near beaches and samples topping 9 million were found in nearby Ballona Creek, city officials said.

It was not until the bacteria levels remained high on Sunday and Monday that city officials began to suspect a serious sewage spill. But it was not until Thursday that the larger spill was confirmed and not until Friday that Delwin Biagi, director of the Bureau of Sanitation, disclosed the spill.

Biagi and other city officials contend that the high bacteria readings were reported to the county, as required, and that a request to post warning signs on Tuesday was declined.

However, the chief county official responsible for beach safety said he did not learn of the high bacteria levels until Tuesday, and by then the beaches were safe again. Jack Petralia, acting director of environmental health for the county, also said his staff did not learn that a major spill occurred until Friday.

“If we had been told it was 2.4 million gallons, we would have posted Venice Beach and Playa del Rey,” Petralia said.

Warning Signs

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, whose administration has been bothered by sewage troubles, announced Friday that the city will begin to post its own warning signs on beaches fouled by city sewage. In the past, the city has allowed the county health department to post beaches when health inspectors saw fit.

Going further, Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) said Friday that city and county officials should be investigated for their failure to warn beachgoers last weekend. He called on Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner to see if the provisions of Proposition 65, the state initiative passed last year that regulates toxic and hazardous waste, may have been violated.

A section of the new law requires that anyone who knows of a public health threat from hazardous waste to notify the county Board of Supervisors and the health department and also requires the health officer to alert the public and press “without delay.”

Reiner’s office said the matter would be reviewed to see if any laws were violated.

Last year, the City of Los Angeles agreed to pay a $625,000 fine--the largest imposed on a municipality under the federal Clean Water Act--for repeatedly polluting the waters of Santa Monica Bay with sewage.

In 1985, the city also paid $180,000 in fines for smaller spills totaling only 175,000 gallons.