L.A. Attempt to Cut Sewer Line Halted by Court

Los Angeles sanitation officials, in a move they called their “most significant enforcement action” ever, tried Wednesday to physically sever the sewer line of a firm cited for dumping hazardous chemicals into the sewer system that empties into Santa Monica Bay.

However, Superior Court Judge Miriam Vogel blocked the city’s action pending a May 27 hearing.

Attorneys for the company, Arrowhead Industries Inc., obtained the ruling from Vogel as city crews were at the scene preparing to cut off the firm’s connection to the city sewer system.

The company, which treats waste water from other industries at a plant south of downtown Los Angeles, has a history of trouble over its discharges into the sewers.

The Los Angeles Board of Public Works voted Tuesday to revoke Arrowhead’s permit to use the sewers after hearing from city inspectors that high amounts of acid and caustic chemicals had been found coming from the plant.

After the hazardous materials were detected, district attorney’s investigators and health officials raided the Arrowhead plant April 12 and turned up further evidence, Board of Public Works President Edward J. Avila said Wednesday.

The board decided to sever the plant’s sewer line because of past troubles with Arrowhead, including a 1985 decision by the board to cut the plant off the city sewer system, Avila said. The 1985 decision was stayed after an Arrowhead attorney pledged “We don’t want this to ever happen again,” but the firm later paid $500,000 in fines.

This week, Arrowhead officials argued that the extent of the hazardous discharges were exaggerated by the city inspectors and also should have been blamed on neighboring companies. Arrowhead used to be a subsidiary of the Arrowhead Drinking Water Co., but is now owned by American Brands.

In Los Angeles, unlike in some cities, there is a single sewer system serving homes and industries. Large industrial firms pay a significant surcharge to discharge high amounts of water--$7.6 million was paid last year by Anheuser Busch for its Van Nuys brewery, for example--but they are banned from discharging hazardous chemicals.

Everything that gets in the sewers--jewelry, spilled beer and more conventional waste--ends up at the city’s Hyperion treatment plant near El Segundo. There the sewage is treated and almost 400 million gallons of effluent, mostly water, is discharged into the ocean each day. But there is no method to remove many hazardous chemicals before they reach the ocean.

Chemicals in the sewer lines are also a threat to workers at Hyperion and the city’s other treatment plants and, in extreme cases, can endanger the public if the chemical leaks out of the sewers, sanitation officials say.

The judge who barred the severing of Arrowhead’s sewer line said Wednesday that she will allow the city to continue monitoring the plant’s sewer discharge closely. If there is even a minor violation the city will be free to sever the line.