Politics and Sewage

Just last month the state of California, through its Regional Water Quality Control Board, fined the City of Los Angeles $10,000 for allowing sewage spills to pollute Santa Monica Bay. Today the state of California, through the regional board’s parent agency, is considering a move that would make it more difficult for the City of Los Angeles to prevent further sewage pollution of the bay. This absurdity should be corrected.

State officials do not acknowledge, of course, City Hall suspicions that the change may be part of a Deukmejian Administration vendetta against Los Angeles, perhaps because of political bitterness between Gov. George Deukmejian and Mayor Tom Bradley and/or the governor’s anger over city opposition to his plan to build a state prison in East Los Angeles. If the Administration is out to “get” Los Angeles in this fashion, it is reprehensible. If politics has nothing to do with the decision, the sheer illogic of it makes it incomprehensible.

The change of procedure, to be considered by the Deukmejian-appointed state Water Resources Control Board on Sept. 3, would put a cap on the distribution of federal sewage-treatment construction grants for the first time. The board’s staff proposed a $44-million limit for fiscal 1988, the federal accounting year starting Oct. 1.

Under the current formula, Los Angeles would get $89.6 million for the modernization of the Hyperion treatment plant at Playa del Rey. The penalty for Los Angeles would be compounded by another proposal to terminate now all pending Clean Water Act grant applications for fiscal 1987 --including more than than $40 million for Los Angeles. In all, Los Angeles could lose as much as $109 million in federal grants for the two fiscal years. That money would have to be made up out of local pocketbooks.

Under any of the alternative formulas considered by the board staff, Los Angeles was the only city that suffered a cutback of such magnitude. San Francisco and Oakland would have smaller reductions, but most others would not be changed at all.

A state Water Resources Control Board spokesman denied that there was any political pressure to change the allocation formula. The board’s staff made similar proposals in the past, but they were rejected. Fiscal 1988 is the final year of federal grants for municipal sewage-treatment projects, and a number of California communities have rushed to beat the deadline. After fiscal 1988, federal aid will arrive in the form of loans only.

Los Angeles is under a court order to improve the Hyperion facility, and has been assessed a $625,000 fine under the federal Clean Water Act for polluting Santa Monica bay with sewage. The cleanup of Santa Monica Bay is a local, state and national priority, and the most dramatic short-range action that can be taken toward that end is the rapid completion of the Hyperion project. The fact that other California cities and towns have decided at the 11th hour to skim off some of the last clean-water grants should not be allowed to interfere with the cleaning up of Santa Monica Bay.