Storm Causes Sewage to Spill Onto Beach : Pumping Stations Knocked Out, 30,000 Gallons Flow Into Storm Drain

While the county Board of Supervisors took heat Thursday for suggesting that sewers be built in bucolic Malibu, the aging sewer system in Los Angeles sprouted a new leak that led health officials to post warnings along the beach.

The latest trouble with the city’s sewers occurred in Pacific Palisades during the storm that drenched coastal areas Thursday morning. A falling tree knocked out power to four sewage pumping stations, causing 30,000 gallons of raw sewage to spill into a storm drain that flows across Will Rogers State Beach to the ocean.

Most of the sewage was cleaned up by city crews and the area treated with chlorine, although a small amount of sewage reached the ocean, city officials said.

As the turnout of 1,000 people to protest the Malibu plan showed, sewers and the effluent they carry have turned into a controversial political issue. Thursday’s spill, coming a day after the state attorney general filed a lawsuit over earlier spills that could cost the city $100 million, is expected to add impetus to a campaign by environmental groups for limits on growth.

Some activists are preparing to push an initiative, currently being drafted with help from Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), that would let Los Angeles voters decide if the sewer troubles are severe enough to justify new limits on construction. Environmental groups have failed to convince state regulators and the courts that new construction should be slowed until the city expands its sewage facilities.

Hayden said supporters of the initiative have not decided how sweeping the measure should be but believe some of the recent spills have occurred because the sewage system is overloaded. The backers would likely try to qualify the measure for the November, 1988, ballot, Hayden said.

Thursday’s spill also is expected to revive criticism that city sanitation officials have been slow to take steps to prevent spills after power outages. After a major spill of raw sewage into the historic Venice canals in June, Mayor Tom Bradley ordered city crews to install backup generators in most of the city’s 55 neighborhood sewage pumping stations.

The four pumping stations that were blacked out Thursday had not yet been equipped with the new generators. The power outage began about 8 a.m. and lasted just over two hours. Edward Avila, president of the city Board of Public Works, said city crews were able to detect the pump failures quickly and succeeded in keeping most of the sewage from reaching the waters of Santa Monica Bay.

Tractors were used to pile sand into dikes to keep the effluent trapped in ponds that were then vacuumed into disposal trucks and returned to the sewers.

Although the beach was posted with warnings on Thursday, city sanitation officials said the new spill would pose no threat to swimmers or to marine life along the shore of Santa Monica Bay.

Bacteria levels in the surf and offshore waters were tested after the spill, but the heavy rains may make it impossible to detect any effect from the raw sewage entering the ocean.

Contamination of the ocean usually is highest the day after a rainstorm because the runoff washes months of collected waste, toxic discharges and grime through the city’s vast network of storm drains and out to sea. Although sewage normally undergoes treatment that kills nearly all bacteria, the storm drains are a separate system that flows into the ocean without treatment.