Setting a Clean Example for the County : Environment: While the Sanitation District continues to defy the law, the City of Los Angeles has stopped polluting Santa Monica Bay and found ways to reuse its sludge.

Two years ago, the City of Los Angeles stopped dumping its sludge into Santa Monica Bay and has managed to keep it out since. This tremendous effort has led to the cleanest sewage-treatment program in the history of Los Angeles County.

Unfortunately, the laudable commitment of the city to the clean-up of the bay is undermined by the regressive policies of the county Sanitation District.

The district is still trying to get a waiver to avoid requirements of the Clean Water Act. This would enable the district to continue discharging about 30,000 more tons of toxic heavy metals, chemicals and oil a year than it could if it complied with the law.

In effect, the district has had a 12-year waiver while it dragged out the application process. This means that tens of thousands of tons of pollutants have been spilled into our bay while the Environmental Protection Agency allowed the district to defy the law. Rather than spending money to clean up the pollution, the district has been spending millions in ratepayer dollars trying to justify its practices.

This issue is not new. Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica) and I wrote separately on these pages last fall opposing the county’s waiver application.

Our arguments were never refuted. This past summer, the Legislature passed Joint Resolution 16, by state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles), which calls on the EPA to deny the waiver. Finally, local organizations such as Heal the Bay and the Natural Resources Defense Council have been pressing the EPA to render its decision, which was due more than a year ago.

What is new here is that, unable to gain the support of elected officials, environmentalists or the Region 9 EPA staff, the district has decided to train its guns on the administrators of the federal agency. The district asked for a secret meeting with EPA regional officials to discuss the waiver. This meeting, which took place Dec. 1, should never have been granted.

This is not the way for a regulator to deal with those it regulates. It undermines public confidence in government’s ability to clean up our environment. A meeting that involves issues such as public health or the quality of our marine environment should be open to the public.

The district gives two reasons why it must continue polluting Santa Monica Bay. It argues that if it is unable to dump the sewage sludge into the ocean, the waste material will have to be buried or burned. This is hardly a valid justification for continuing to contaminate our bay with under-treated sewage. The City of Los Angeles, which treats more sewage than the district, not only cleans it better, but also has managed to beneficially reuse 100% of the sludge it produces. Sludge disposal, therefore, cannot be used as an excuse to pollute the ocean.

The district also claims that continued discharge of sewage sludge will bury the DDT that it discharged into the bay between 1947 and 1971. This, district officials say, will “remove” the DDT from the marine environment. Not only has the district failed to prove that its discharge is covering the DDT (evidence indicates that landslides from Palos Verdes could be responsible), but there is no guarantee that the DDT will remain buried during storms or be undisturbed by bottom-burrowing sea creatures.

More important, the sludge solids are just as bad for the environment as the poison they purportedly bury. Two hundred tons of DDT are believed to be trapped in the sediments on the bottom of the bay. Annually, the district would spread on top of that 6.6 tons of arsenic, 2.5 tons of cadmium, 25 tons of lead, 5.5 tons of selenium and 40 tons of chromium, not to mention thousands of tons of oil, grease and ammonia. Thus, if the district wins the five-year waiver, it will be capping 200 tons of DDT with 400 tons of assorted other, equally noxious, hazardous wastes.

Is this any way to heal the bay?

The actions of the district and Region 9 are perfect examples of why activists must turn to direct action to protect the environment. The bureaucratic delays, abuse of the regulatory process and the continued deterioration of our ocean quality are inexcusable. Should California voters pass the Environmental Protection Act of 1990 next November, the district will have to upgrade its treatment to the full extent of the law.

We shouldn’t have to wait another year for a vote of the people to force government to make the right decision. If progress against pollution in Santa Monica Bay is to continue, denial of the waiver is the next logical step.