The Message Is Loud and Clear to Utility Firm: Quiet Down : Redondo Beach: Ear-splitting sound in the middle of the night spurs council to prosecute Edison for noise violations.

Fed up with the incessant hum of generators and galvanized by a freak pre-dawn blast of noise earlier this week, the Redondo Beach City Council voted Tuesday to prosecute Southern California Edison--one of the city’s principal sources of noise--for violating the local noise ordinance.

The decision, at a council meeting Tuesday, marked the second time the city has taken Edison to court for alleged noise violations at its Redondo Beach power station. The city lost the first case last year, in part, city officials said at the time, because it was difficult for the police to separate Edison noise from other sources of noise in the neighborhood.

The latest action comes at a politically delicate time for Edison. The utility has been lobbying in recent weeks for the council’s support before the California Public Utility Commission, which is considering Edison’s request for a controversial merger with San Diego Gas & Electric Co. The council is scheduled to take a position on the matter next week.

Walt Dougher, regional affairs manager for the utility, apologized publicly to the city on behalf of the company’s senior management, explaining that the ear-splitting industrial shriek that shook the Redondo harbor area at 1:07 a.m. Tuesday was the result of an electronic malfunction that prompted the safety valves to let off steam at the power plant’s No. 7 unit. He said the unit was being activated to help the utility meet the demand for electricity during the current heat wave.

Dougher said that the safety valves in the plant are rarely set off and that the noise usually lasts only 10 seconds or so. But when the boilers at the No. 7 unit overheated Tuesday, he said, the steam was so saturated with water that the valves could not close properly. Consequently, three minutes passed before Edison crews managed to rectify the problem manually.

“We feel terrible about what happened,” Dougher said of the 100-decibel incident. “The people who take pride in operating the plant feel dismayed, as does our senior management.”

But neighbors of the power station, who have complained for years about noise levels at Edison and who are now campaigning against the merger, were in no mood for apologies.

“You all are listening to a bunch of words; there has been no action. They continue to violate the law,” said Tom O’Leary, who has called on the council for more than a decade to crack down on noise and other pollution from the power station.

He and others told the council that police have logged at least half a dozen noise violations in the last month at the plant on Harbor Drive, not including the noise that catapulted neighbors from their beds Tuesday.

William Benko, who lives in a new condominium complex near the plant, told the council that when the noise hit, “my wife lifted two feet off the bed and screamed.”

Another condominium resident, Richard Gould, 35, buttressed Benko’s complaints in an interview.

“I about hit the ceiling,” fumed Gould, whose unit is about 500 feet from the Edison plant. “It was like PSSHHHHHHHHTTTTT!!! Like steam escaping, but very loud. I yelled to my wife and even yelling, she couldn’t hear me.”

And a third neighbor, Rosie Franklin, urged the council to join the ranks of those opposing the Edison merger.

If approved, the merger would make Edison the nation’s largest operating electrical utility. But many of those who live near the Redondo Beach plant have maintained that if Edison is allowed to grow, the soot, smog and noise pollution in their neighborhood will become unbearable.

Under the merger proposal, electricity generation would be shifted from older San Diego power plants to more efficient Edison stations, including those in Redondo Beach and El Segundo. According to figures supplied by Edison, the Redondo Beach facility would produce about 16% more power over the next 10 years, and the El Segundo plant’s output would increase by about 44%.

Although Edison has proposed a number of measures that the utility contends would mitigate the impact of the extra load, Gould said those figures add up to more sleepless nights for him and his neighbors, among other problems. As it is, he said, the humming noise generated by the power station keeps him awake night after night--a disturbance that, he added, is often in excess of the city noise ordinance.

Under current law, noise from the plant is not supposed to exceed 50 decibels during the day and 45 at night, roughly the noise level of a quiet restaurant. But noise-meter readings taken by police in the last week--prompted by neighborhood complaints and documented in police reports--indicate that the plant has exceeded allowable noise levels on at least six occasions since Sept. 4, not counting the Tuesday incident.

City Atty. Gordon Phillips said he has gone over the reports with a consulting attorney who “believes they are prosecutable,” and Mayor Brad Parton noted that when the noise erupted Tuesday, police coincidentally were in the area measuring ambient noise and have a record of the blast.

Parton chided Phillips for not moving more quickly on the earlier complaints, noting that “if someone was speeding, they’d get a ticket right away.” But after the last, unsuccessful attempt to prosecute Edison, City Prosecutor John Slawson complained that the existing noise ordinance was virtually unenforceable because noise readings taken by police in response to complaints are vulnerable in court.

When responding to a complaint under the existing code, an enforcement officer takes a measurement that includes not only the offending noise, but also noise from traffic, aircraft and other sources in the community. Such factors are difficult to separate from the noise generated by the Edison plant, Slawson told The Times last year.