El Segundo May Take L.A. to Court on Hyperion Plan : Pollution: Approval of an expanded sewage plant does not take into account environmental effects on the facility’s neighbors, city officials say.

El Segundo officials say they expect to take the city of Los Angeles to court over its plan to overhaul and expand the huge Hyperion sewage treatment plant in Playa del Rey.

Under the latest version of the expansion plan, approved in a 13-0 vote Tuesday by the Los Angeles City Council, Hyperion would be upgraded to provide intensified treatment for 450 million gallons of sewage a day.

El Segundo City Council members, who objected Tuesday that Los Angeles has not yet studied how air pollution from the enlarged plant might affect their city, will consider filing suit Feb. 5, City Manager Ron Cano said Wednesday.

Said Mayor Carl Jacobson: “The community is very concerned about what this project is going to do. I’m very sure that a majority of residents would be down there pushing us to take legal action if we weren’t headed in that direction already.”

At issue Tuesday was an updated Los Angeles plan for complying with a federal court order requiring full secondary treatment of all of Hyperion’s ocean-bound sewage by Dec. 31, 1998. The city had originally planned to provide upgraded treatment for 330 million gallons a day but officials say added capacity is needed to accommodate growth.

Secondary treatment involves the use of biological processes to remove solids from waste water. About half of Hyperion’s waste water receives secondary treatment and the rest undergoes primary treatment, a less effective method of removing solids.

El Segundo officials say they support the goal of intensified treatment. But at Tuesday’s meeting, all five members of the El Segundo City Council said Los Angeles had failed to study whether the $1.2-billion Hyperion project will pose a health risk to nearby residents.

Specifically, El Segundo asserts that the environmental impact report on the project, certified by the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday, fails to gauge how airborne pollutants from the plant might affect people living downwind. Already, they say, the plant has become a troublesome source of odors and noise for El Segundo.

“I’ve seen the Hyperion grow from a sometimes nuisance to the major problem it is now,” El Segundo Councilman J. B. Wise said in testimony at Tuesday’s meeting. He called on Los Angeles leaders to visit El Segundo, and “get downwind of what you’re doing to us.”

Said Councilman Jim Clutter: “These wastes will be processed within only hundreds of feet of many residents. . . . I believe that it is unconscionable for you to approve this plan without having examined the health risks.”

Robert Horii, Los Angeles’ city engineer, said the city will perform a health assessment in the process of securing construction permits from regional air quality authorities.

And high-tech pollution control equipment to be installed as part of the project will ensure that Hyperion, although larger, will produce less air pollution than it does today, Horii said.

“We’ll have less (pollution) because we will treat the air before it goes to the atmosphere,” he said Wednesday. “That’s a guarantee.”

Such assurances, however, do not satisfy El Segundo officials, who say Los Angeles officials should have postponed consideration of the expansion plan until a health study was performed. Los Angeles Councilman Robert Farrell proposed that approach Tuesday, but it was voted down 10 to 3.

Said Ron Cano, El Segundo’s city manager: “It doesn’t make sense to do health risk analysis when you’re pulling construction permits.”

El Segundo officials also argued Tuesday that the updated Hyperion plan would provide from 14% to 30% more sewage treatment capacity than is needed over the next 20 years. Hyperion planners, they said, failed to trim their sewage flow estimates to account for future water conservation.

And excess capacity, they warned, will help spur population growth and overcrowding in the Los Angeles area. Said Councilman Alan West: “If you wish to see a clear example of that, just look at Lake Tahoe basin. There is a direct correlation between sewer permits issued and growth of the region.”

Members of the Los Angeles City Council disagreed, saying it would be foolish to scale back expansion of Hyperion. The plant handles sewage from Los Angeles, El Segundo, Santa Monica, Culver City, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Glendale, Burbank and San Fernando.

“I have never believed, and I don’t think the council believes, that the way you manage growth is by cutting off sewer capacity,” Los Angeles Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said. “That’s the way you pollute the bay. It’s not the way you manage growth.”