Balloon Show Is Harbinger of Residents’ Reduced Views : Demonstration by Hyperion Illustrates the Effect of the Plant’s Proposed Expansion in El Segundo

It was balloon day Saturday at the Hyperion Treatment Plant, but few homeowners in the hills in nearby El Segundo found any cause to celebrate.

Officials at the sewage treatment plant near Imperial Highway and Vista Del Mar Boulevard raised 50 large weather balloons about 100 feet into the air to demonstrate to residents how much of their ocean view would be obstructed by the proposed construction of 12 sewage processing tanks.

“I couldn’t believe it when when I saw the balloons this morning,” said Elroy Tatge as he stood on his patio looking at a row of balloons that partially blocked his view of the water.

Tatge, 57, and his wife, Ana, moved into the house in July. Before buying the house, he said, he asked officials at El Segundo City Hall whether Hyperion had proposed any construction plans that would hamper his view. He said they told him no such plan existed.

“Frankly,” he said, “if I had known the view would have been blocked, it would have been a deciding factor in buying the house.”

He called the plan “not acceptable.”

If approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and the city of Los Angeles, the dozen tanks, known as digesters, would each stand 105 feet above ground level and 85 feet in diameter, according to Walt Naydo, division engineer for Hyperion.

Naydo said the proposed tanks would be lowered about 30 feet into the ground but could not be lowered further because they would encounter ground water. Hyperion currently uses smaller digesters, but Naydo said larger units are needed to provide the necessary capacity.

Some of the balloons raised Saturday represented the height of an additional dozen tanks that Hyperion officials are considering building at the facility later, he said.

The digester tanks--resembling large eggs--would each hold about 2.5 million gallons of solid sewage, which would be partially consumed in a process using artificial bacteria, he said.

18 Tanks Operating

Hyperion, which treats sewage for most of the city of Los Angeles, has 18 digester tanks in operation, but Naydo said the facility needs to expand its capacity to meet the city’s growing needs. Hyperion processes about 440 million gallons of raw sewage a day, and by the year 2010, the plant is expected to process about 570 million gallons, he said.

If everything goes as scheduled, Naydo said, construction of the digesters would begin in mid-1991 and be completed by late 1993.

Naydo said Hyperion officials have held three public hearings on the matter and have sent several letters to residents to inform them about the planned expansion. But he said few residents attended the meetings or responded to the letters.

“We have been trying to get the people to be responsive to what we see as a potential impact,” he said. “But we’ve had very little luck.”

He said the balloons were raised in hopes of prompting residents to respond. The plan worked. The balloons were raised at about 8 a.m., and by 9:30 the telephones in the Hyperion administrative offices were ringing.

Standing in Yards

By 10:30 that morning, several residents in the middle-class, single-family neighborhoods above the plant were standing in their front yards discussing the proposed expansion.

“It’s upsetting to us because we bought the house partly for the view,” said Hilary Murphy, a teacher’s aide in El Segundo who moved into a house on Hillcrest Street in April.

Murphy said she and her husband, Michael, spend a great deal of time watching the sunsets on the ocean from their patio. Now, she said, the view will be ruined by the large tanks.

“It’s awful what progress does,” she said.

John Teleso, who has lived for 10 years with his wife, Sandi, and two daughters in a house down the street, agreed.

Teleso, an aerospace worker, said the tanks would obstruct his view and lower the value of his house. He said he has talked to his neighbors and has contacted an attorney to see what legal recourse he has.

Teleso, like several of his neighbors, said homeowners in the area are planning to join to fight the proposed project.

‘Bring Everyone Together’

“This is the one thing that is going to bring everyone together to fight it,” he said.

El Segundo Mayor Carl Jacobson and Councilman Scot Dannen joined some residents on Hillcrest Street to discuss the matter. Jacobson said the city of El Segundo does not have the power to reject the project because the Hyperion plant is located just outside the city’s border and within the city of Los Angeles.

He said, however, that city officials have been meeting with Hyperion officials to discuss alternative methods to increase the plant’s capacity, such as building underground tanks.

Said Dannen: “The more noise the residents make, the more mitigating measures they may add.”