Hyperion Billed as Top Violator : Study of Sewage Facilities Done Before Improvements

The largest sewage treatment facilities in California--led by the controversial Hyperion plant run by Los Angeles on the shore of Santa Monica Bay--have been allowed to get away with numerous violations of clean-water laws, a public-interest lobbying group charged Tuesday.

However, the study of sewage-treatment practices by the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) looked at violations that occured before Los Angeles officials drastically reduced ocean discharges from Hyperion last November and, at least temporarily, ended the violations.

In all, the group looked at the reports filed by 14 sewage plants and counted 1,703 violations of laws that guard against excessive discharges of contaminated effluent or toxic chemicals into oceans and rivers. Some 1,184 violations, or 69%, were recorded at the Hyperion plant alone in the two years prior to November.

Typically, violations of the clean-water standards are detected by the operators of the plants themselves and reported to state authorites. But group officials charged that the self-reporting method and lax follow-up enforcement by state authorities have contributed to the violations.

For instance, the group noted that the state’s requirement for sewage plant inspections was met at only five of the 14 plants studied.

The problems at Hyperion have been well chronicled, and city officials acted surprised Tuesday to find the plant’s troubles again held up as the example of bad management.

“They were talking about the distant past, as far as I’m concerned,” said Edward Avila, president of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works. “We’ve had no violations for at least 7 months that I know of--zero. The Hyperion plant is performing better than it ever has in its history.”

Last November, faced with an impending deadline set by a federal judge, Hyperion stopped discharging concentrated sewage solids, or sludge, into the Pacific. The plant’s operators also improved the purity of the 400 million gallons a day of liquid effluent still dumped in the bay, and this year there have been no violations of state and federal standards, city officials said.

Before then, however, the performance of Hyperion was notorious, as the CALPIRG study found. Los Angeles has been fined repeatedly by the state Regional Water Quality Control Board for violations at Hyperion and for leaks from the sewer system that feeds the plant, and in 1986 paid $625,000 as part of a court settlement with federal officials.

The problems at other plants are on a much smaller scale and, perhaps fittingly, are less well known than the Hyperion troubles.

After Hyperion, the plant with the most violations was found to be the Carson treatment plant operated by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts The study found 96 violations in two years at the Carson plant, followed by 66 at the San Francisco Southeast treatment plant and 63 at the Stockton treatment plant.