Local News in Brief : Hyperion Funds Continue

Payments of about $150,000 a month to expand Los Angeles’ Hyperion sewage treatment plant will continue uninterrupted, state water officials say, because the city has forwarded part of the $840,000 in underground storage tank fees owed to the state.

Water officials threatened to withhold sewer payments because the money is the only financial leverage they had to force the city to collect and pass on the fees.

A spokesman from the State Water Resources Control Board, which had demanded at least partial payment by June 15, said the agency received $57,000 from Los Angeles Tuesday.

The remaining $783,000 will be paid as collected in coming months, city officials said.

The fees were mandated in a 1983 law that required prompt inventory and inspection for leaks of the state’s estimated 170,000 underground tanks used primarily for storage of fuel and industrial solvents. Los Angeles had been the only major city or large county in the state that had not collected and forwarded fees from owners of underground tanks.

The city, which has about 15,000 tanks, did not bill owners for fees until May and will not begin to force owners to test tanks for leaks until July 1--three years after the original deadline.