About 75 Homes Affected : Map of Planned Sewer Route Contains Error

City officials say it was only a drafting error, but some Westchester residents are questioning whether an erroneous route shown in a project report for a new sewer line was intentional, meant to keep them from protesting earlier.

A map in the draft environmental impact report for a project to replace the deteriorating North Outfall Sewer line beneath Culver City and Westchester shows the route south of the San Diego Freeway veering to the west and heading south along Sepulveda Boulevard. At Manchester Avenue, the route heads southwesterly to the Hyperion Treatment Plant in Playa del Rey.

Deadline Rush

But city officials say the map should have shown the route staying east of Sepulveda and going beneath a residential area in Westchester. To install the 8-mile-long line, workers will have to tunnel beneath about 75 houses in a neighborhood east of the San Diego Freeway.

Officials say all the environmental studies required for the project were done for the route beneath the residential area. Only the drawing of the map was wrong, an error created because of a rush to meet deadlines, they say.

The city is under a state order to have the replacement sewer line operating by April 1, 1993.

The map has been used all year and was shown in the environmental impact report adopted by the City Council in July. On Tuesday, the City Council Public Works Committee approved an addendum to the report showing the correct route. The full council is expected to approve the correction within two weeks, according to Wayne C. Mohr, project manager for the replacement sewer.

Construction on the $120-million project is scheduled to begin next summer and be completed by Jan. 1, 1993, Mohr said.

But many Westchester residents are crying foul over the error. At a meeting Monday night in a church classroom, about 100 residents complained that they only discovered the correct route after receiving letters that the city began sending Aug. 1, seeking easements beneath their homes for the sewer line.

“They knew about the routing all along and they kept it under wraps,” said Don Herron, a resident who organized the Monday meeting. “They knew that residents preferred that the route go under city property and would complain about it going underneath their homes.”

Questioned Route

City officials denied any cover-up, saying they realized the error only after being contacted by residents.

Residents also complained that deed transfers for the 30-foot-square underground easements--for which residents are being paid $500--were vague, and did not spell out who would be liable for any damage caused by the new sewer line. Mohr said city officials would work individually with any resident on specific language in the deed transfers.

Residents said they were concerned about potential damage to their homes because of the tunneling and asked city officials at the meeting why the sewer line could not go along Airport Boulevard to La Tijera Boulevard and avoid their homes.

City officials said that because sewage flowing down the line is powered by gravity, a slight decline is necessary. Because of the terrain in the area, those public streets would not provide the slope needed, city engineering consultant Rodney Lundin said.

After the nearly 3-hour meeting, some residents still were not satisfied with answers to their questions.

“I think it was their intention all along to keep us in the dark,” Herron said. “I have three children and a wife. This is just another concern that I don’t need and that the residents of Westchester don’t need.”

The replacement sewer was ordered after raw sewage spills into Ballona Creek and Santa Monica Bay were found to come from an overflow of the 60-year-old existing North Outfall Sewer line. City engineers said debris and sediment have cut the capacity of the line by a third. The line carries about 200 million gallons of sewage a day from the San Fernando Valley to the Hyperion sewage treatment plant.

On Jan. 27, 1986, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board ordered the city to build four 1-million gallon storage tanks to handle future overflow problems, to build a new sewer line and to clean out the existing North Outfall Sewer line.

The replacement sewer line will extend from Rodeo Road west of La Cienega Boulevard roughly parallel to Jefferson Boulevard beneath oil fields, West Los Angeles College and Holy Cross Cemetery. It will then proceed southwest beneath the San Diego Freeway, Westchester and Los Angeles International Airport to the waste-water treatment plant in Playa del Rey.

The 12-foot-wide pipeline will range from 30 to 260 feet beneath the surface and have a capacity of 300-million gallons a day.

Construction is not expected to produce noise and vibrations noticeable on the surface.

Workers and equipment will enter and leave the tunnel through two portals 35-feet in diameter. One will be on airport land northwest of Lincoln and Sepulveda boulevards; the other will be in an oil field east of Jefferson Boulevard south of Leahy Street.