Bradley to Spell Out His Offensive Against Sewage Spills at Beaches

Stung by complaints that his Administration has bungled the city’s ocean sewage cleanup, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley plans to announce today his first attack on spills that have polluted coastal waters with more than 20 million gallons of effluent since May 25, City Hall sources said Monday.

The proposals, some of which have already been put in place, include hiring consultants to take over some duties of city workers at the Hyperion treatment plant near Playa del Rey and reorganizing the management of the city departments that oversee the troubled plant.

However, sources said the moves are unlikely to prevent a reoccurence this summer of the electrical problems that have caused most recent spills at the Hyperion facility, which was built in 1950 and has not worn well the years of exposure to salty sea air on the El Segundo dunes. Temporary new equipment that could reduce the chance of electrical failure is not expected to be on line for another 120 days.

In his announcement today, Bradley is also expected to include a plan that would require new training for many of the 600 employees at the Hyperion facility. Bad morale and poor performance by workers at the plant were cited as major problems in a highly critical consultant’s report two years ago.

“We’re going to have massive training programs to bring all our employees up to speed,” Public Works Commissioner Edward Avila confirmed Monday.

The Hyperion facility is undergoing a major renovation as part of the city’s $2.3-billion upgrading of sewer lines and treatment facilities, required as part of a settlement in a federal court suit. Included in the renovation is a major new experimental facility that will dry out concentrated sewage and then burn it to generate electricity. The management and personnel actions are partially aimed at preparing for this new operation, a portion of which is to be dedicated by Bradley today.

But City Hall sources said a major goal of Bradley’s new strategy is to defray the political criticism that he has taken from Westside elected officials, many of whom have supported Bradley in the past, about the city’s sewage polluting Santa Monica Bay.

Over the weekend, Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica) and two City Council members said they will ask Congress and the federal Environmental Protection Agency to put limits on growth in Los Angeles if the sewage spills continue.

The moves that Bradley will propose include the creation of two new high-level positions in the Bureau of Sanitation, the city department that operates the sewers and the Hyperion facility. The new officials, who have not been selected, will double the number of assistant directors in the bureau from two to four. “We’re bringing the bureau up to a higher level of operation,” Avila said Monday.

Faced with earlier criticism of the Hyperion operation, the city has already installed an outside consultant, Don Smith, as the plant’s manager. A new executive position in the city’s Bureau of Engineering has also been created to streamline the construction work at Hyperion, which was dealt a setback last year when a major contractor was fired. This February an overheated pipe damaged a portion of the new Hyperion energy recovery system and forced more delays.

Since May 25 a series of troubles at Hyperion have diverted between 18 and 24 million gallons of waste water--some only partially treated--into a pipe that carries the effluent only a mile out to sea. Normally, the waste is pumped five miles out, where it has little if any effect on local beaches.

On June 6 another 2.4 million gallons of raw sewage spilled from a pumping station into the Venice canals, which are lined with expensive homes, after a power failure. This spill led to very high bacteria levels on Venice and Marina del Rey beaches.

Two supervisors at Hyperion were suspended in June for failing to report two major diversions of sewage into the one-mile pipe that occurred late on a weekend night. City officials said it appeared that the supervisors tried to cover up the spills.

When the diversions were brought to the city’s attention, Board of Public Works President Maureen Kindel called for a criminal investigation of the failure to report the sewage spills. But prosecutors said there appeared to be no criminal violation by the supervisors.

Supervisors Reassigned

The city has reassigned the supervisors to other sewage facilities while the investigation is completed.

Bradley is also expected to announce today that the city will continue a new practice of posting beaches with warning signs whenever a diversion from Hyperion occurs, rather than waiting for the results of bacterial tests.

This precaution was exercised last weekend after the latest diversion, which pumped 6.2 million gallons of treated effluent into the bay Friday.