Los Angeles Sewage Spill in Santa Monica Bay

Two years ago (early summer 1985 when the first reported sewage spills into Ballona Creek were happening) the Neanderthal Hyperion Plant reached and exceeded the 420 million gallons per day of sewage that the Southern California Assn. of Governments had projected would not flow into the plant before the year 2000.

Was it gross negligence, by two Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation supervisors at the city’s Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant, which resulted in a cumulative total of 17 million gallons of partially treated sewage being discharged one mile offshore last month, or does the blame belong elsewhere?

Not reporting the spills is reprehensible and a serious violation of state- and federal-mandated pollution disclosure requirements. Culpability however, should lie with the mayor and Los Angeles City Council for their encouragement of irresponsible growth.

Sewage hook-up fees for new development to connect into the Hyperion system obviously have not been providing the funds needed to provide the additional sewage capacity required to accommodate all the building permits that have been issued.

Looking briefly around Southern California, sewage fees charged for new single family homes to buy into sewage systems reveals a broad range of successes and failures of developers and their lobbyists to keep sewage fees low. The city of Escondido charges $3,200, Los Angeles County $1,000 to $1,500, Orange County $250, the city of Los Angeles now $475, to increase to $2,190 by mid-1993.

Pump failures (eight estimated since Jan. 1) are acknowledged by sanitation officials as “quite common;” the mayor and City Council need to implement immediate corrective action to abate emergency discharges of untreated sewage resulting from overloaded pumps and power failures.

Until city infrastructure catches up to the population and until the mayor and the City Council demand better performance from its Planning Department, the Board of Public Works and the Bureau of Sanitation, a slow-growth policy cannot work.

Time and money are needed now, not excuses and more promises of doing better at giving the public timely notice of spills.

Time and money to enable the Hyperion system to catch up to past development burdens which were allowed to overwhelm the sewage system; and also time and money, to be able to accommodate all the future development expected after 1998.

Additional capacity now planned for Hyperion will not be completed until 1998. If population estimates are correct, Hyperion upon completion will once again exceed or be at capacity, as it was and continues to be since 1985.

To accomplish future money needs, adequate sewage mitigation fees must be determined and collected immediately for growth that is to occur in the future.

A moratorium on building permits and hook-ups to the Hyperion tributary system must be implemented immediately.

NANCY K. TAYLOR

DORI DENNING

Sierra Club Co-Chairpersons

California Clean Coastal Waters Task Force

West Hollywood