L.A. Plans to Ship Sludge to Guatemala and Spare the Ocean

Los Angeles may have found a distant resting place for the sewage that some scientists believe to be poisoning Santa Monica Bay--the jungles and farmlands of Guatemala.

Under a plan to be unveiled Friday, Los Angeles would turn over 350 tons a day of concentrated sewage, or sludge, to a Washington firm for shipment to a new port on the west coast of the Central American nation, just south of Mexico.

There the sludge would be spread out to dry, allowed to compost, then be added to the tropical Guatemalan soil as fertilizer.

Though not widely talked about in pleasant conversation, sludge from a number of American cities is already put to a variety of uses. The Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, for example, sell some of theirs to the Kellogg Supply Co. for sale in local nurseries. Philadelphia in particular has looked into the idea of disposing of both sewage and garbage overseas.

But this would be the first major export of sewage from the West Coast if finally approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and City Hall politicians.

For city officials in Los Angeles, the Guatemala connection would be costly--at least $6 million a year and far more if all of the city’s sludge is shipped to Central America. But it would give them the hedge of a guaranteed place to dispose of sludge after the end of this year, when a federal court order forbids the city from ever again dumping sludge into the Pacific.

Decade-Old Suit

The city negotiated the deadline to settle a 10-year-old lawsuit against Los Angeles by the EPA and California. The settlement, reached last year, included a record $625,000 fine for past violations and subjects the city to future fines for any ocean dumping of the sludge, which is produced at the Hyperion sewage treatment plant near El Segundo.

The preferred disposal method is to burn the sludge in a new incinerator, still under construction, that will tower over the coastal dunes and burn dried sludge to produce electricity. But the incinerator, dubbed the Hyperion Energy Recovery System, is an experimental process that city officials fear may break down often enough to require an alternative disposal method.

Hence the interest in Guatemala, which seems happy to take the sludge.

Oscar Padilla Vidaure, the Guatemalan ambassador to the United States, came to Los Angeles Aug. 21 to visit Mayor Tom Bradley. City officials involved in the negotiations said Monday that Padilla Vidaure was eager for the project to get under way.

Officially, the city’s Board of Public Works is scheduled to consider the Guatemala deal on Friday in the form of a contract with Applied Recovery Technologies Inc., a Virginia company that is hoping to lure several American cities into shipping sludge overseas.

The firm has hired Thames Water Authority, a quasi-public agency in Britain, to construct a facility for handling sludge at Porto Quetzal, a modern deep-sea harbor near San Jose on Guatemala’s west coast.

1,100 Tons a Day

In Los Angeles, about 1,100 tons of sludge a day are produced in the treatment of raw sewage at Hyperion. More than 90% of sewage is liquid, but in treatment the share of the mix that are solids is skimmed off. These solids are then processed in a “digester” to kill bacteria and are spun in a centrifuge to remove even more water.

“It has a gooey, mud-like consistency at that point,” said Deputy City Atty. Chris Westhoff, part of the city’s team that visited Guatemala and London to check out arrangements and met in Washington with EPA and State Department officials.

The jelly-like goo will be trucked to the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro for loading onto ships. Under the contract proposed by the city, a minimum of 350 tons a day would be shipped (at $48 a ton cost to city taxpayers). More important, the city would have the right to send all of its sludge to Guatemala if the new Hyperion plant should break down.

“That’s very appealing to the Bureau of Sanitation,” Maureen Kindel, president of the Board of Public Works, said Monday. “It’s a high-risk, high-opportunity project for the city because it has never been done before. But it would give us security.”

Dumped at Sea

Most of the sludge is now dumped seven miles out to sea off the beaches of Playa del Rey. But marine scientists have expressed alarm in recent years that the incessant dumping of sludge, which contains some metals believed toxic as well as sewage bacteria, has altered the marine life of Santa Monica Bay.

State regulations advise against using undiluted sludge compost on certain vegetables, particularly leafy vegetables. But Barry Groveman, a former deputy city attorney who represents the project’s sponsors in Los Angeles, said the EPA has given its blessing to the export plan. In addition, the city has met with Guatemalan environmental officials and pledged to meet all of their requirements.

Some Los Angeles sludge is already hauled by truck to a landfill near Valencia. In addition to Guatemala, the city also hopes to sign contracts to dispose of sludge at a Riverside County landfill and with a Chino area compost facility.