Bay Restoration Project Delays Attacked : Pollution: Critics say diverse group gets hopelessly bogged down in details of Santa Monica area cleanup. They cite recent unveiling of warning signs that took a year to debate and produce.

After more than a year of heated debate, proposals and subcommittee meetings, the unveiling was at hand.

The Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project was ready to reveal how it would keep swimmers away from potentially unhealthful storm drain runoff.

As television cameras rolled at the news conference on the beach in Pacific Palisades last Wednesday, the project unveiled--a batch of signs.

Each bore an 11-word message--”Caution! Storm Drain: Water and Surf May be Contaminated. No Swimming”--and a stick figure, in swimming pose, crossed by a red slash.

The signs may well accomplish their purpose, say critics of the project. But, they add, the saga of the signs also sends another, unintended, message: That the organization heading the cleanup of Santa Monica Bay can get itself hopelessly bogged down in detail.

While committees are formed and studies commissioned, they say, the bay continues to be polluted with sewage, trash and industrial waste.

The Restoration Project--a coalition of environmentalists, government bureaucrats, business people and elected officials--will receive nearly $1.5 million this year from the federal and state governments to work on plans for cleaning the bay, one of Southern California’s most important natural resources. The project is entering its third year as part of the federal government’s National Estuary Program, which oversees the cleanup of 17 of the nation’s most significant bays and estuaries.

But in the project’s first two years, episodes like the “Great Sign Debate” have frustrated many of the group’s members. At least one is openly hostile.

“It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money and a distraction from the real issues,” said Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica).

Hayden said that he will try to kill the group’s $333,000 state appropriation unless it adopts a series of recommendations for the bay that environmentalists plan to make in the coming week.

Cliff Gladstein, president of the environmental group Heal the Bay, is more hopeful that the Restoration Project will succeed, but he is also impatient.

“I think more confrontation is going to be necessary,” Gladstein said. “There are some entities with vested interests that want to maintain the status quo in the bay. And that isn’t good enough.”

Despite such qualms, most of the wide array of interests that make up the Restoration Project still view it as the best hope to protect the bay from sewage, contaminated storm water, industrial outfalls and beach litter.

Supporters say the group’s centerpiece--a Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan for the bay--should succeed because virtually all opposing views are represented within the project’s membership. The 54-member group brings together such oil-and-water entities as the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Chevron U.S.A., Heal the Bay and the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, which operate a plant that dumps partially treated sewage in the bay.

These strange bedfellows have labored largely in obscurity since the management committee first convened--with tweedy Westside environmentalists working in relative harmony alongside buttoned-down business leaders and career bureaucrats.

But the spirit of collegiality may be tested as environmentalists become more vocal.

Last week, representatives of several environmental groups and an aide to Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), all members of the project, presented a resolution opposing the ongoing waiver the county receives from federal requirements to fully treat sewage at its Carson waste plant.

“It’s a fundamentally important pollution issue,” said Peter Saundry, coastal chair of the Sierra Club’s local chapter. “If the Restoration Project doesn’t address an issue like this, then there is no reason for it really being around.”

But county officials who operate the treatment plant, and representatives of cities that send their waste there, continue to urge caution.

County sanitation officials said they are not yet prepared for the estimated $350-million retrofitting that would clean effluent from the Carson plant to levels required in the federal Clean Water Act. They argue that sediments from the sewage outfall are actually helping cover up another environmental mistake--deposits on the ocean bottom of DDT and other harmful chemicals that were pumped through the sewers in the 1950s, ‘60s and early ‘70s.

A vote on the divisive issue was put off until the project’s next quarterly meeting, in September. Environmentalists promised that they will not be delayed again.

Heal the Bay also plans to press matters Monday by releasing its own plan for restoring the bay. It is expected to reassert opposition to the county’s sewage treatment plan, advocate a study on the health risks of swimming in the bay and call for procedures for closing beaches during periods of critical contamination.

Levine and other environmental groups plan to support the proposals. But many government officials who are project members privately bristle at the environmentalists for breaking with the Restoration Project as a whole.

“They are comfortable attacking us,” said one official, who asked to remain anonymous. “A lot of people consider it divisive.”

Environmentalists said their new initiatives are an alternative to leaving the Restoration Project, something they considered last summer. At about the same time, Levine--author of legislation that helped create the project--wrote a 14-page letter in which he said he was “deeply concerned by (its) inadequate progress to date.”

Project director Catherine Tyrrell now calls Levine’s letter “a productive catalyst for change. What came out of that was really focusing more on the action plan.”

Subcommittees were subsequently established on topics such as watersheds, wetlands and marine habitats and they are writing early drafts of the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan.

The plan--to be submitted in 1993 for review by the EPA and Gov. Pete Wilson--will outline how the bay should be cleaned up and managed even after the project is disbanded in 1994. The plan also is supposed to identify sources of money for the work, since the federal government has not reserved any for implementation.

Some Restoration Project members roll their eyes or sigh when asked about the sign debate--blaming the seemingly endless discussion that produced the 11 words, in large part, on the size and diversity of the management committee. But they say the result still will be a success if the signs keep the public away from storm drain water.

They embrace other project efforts without qualification, including: research that revealed a Santa Monica storm drain was emptying sewage into the bay, sponsorship of a Playa del Reynesting site for an endangered bird species and an early application for permits that eventually may set limits on storm drain pollution.

Later this year, Restoration Project research is expected to provide new information on the contamination of seafood caught in the bay and report which consumers are most likely to eat tainted fish.

“Today, I’m cautiously optimistic about the project,” Levine said this week. “This was always the best hope for cleaning up the bay. It was never designed to be an overnight process.”

Hayden, skeptical from the start, remains unconvinced. He calls the Restoration Project “dangerous” because “it gives the illusion that something is being done and massages the public into thinking something is being done when, in fact, it’s just a bunch of meetings and studies.”

Environmentalists are being co-opted, he says, by working too closely with officials who represent the pollution makers. He suggests that the sources of pollution are already known and that government officials should simply resolve to clamp down on such dischargers as the county’s sewage plant, the storm drain system and Chevron’s El Segundo refinery.

Loyalists to the project say they have no doubt about the group’s good intentions, but harbor some concern about whether their recommendations will be carried out.

Some recall uncomfortably an earlier EPA initiative. That 1970s effort, directed by the Southern California Assn. of Governments, resulted in a plan to clean up the bay that never was used.

“My biggest concern is that when the (Restoration Project) is done, will it all be implemented?” said John Mitchell, who heads the county Department of Public Works Water Quality Section.

Tyrrell, a former SCAG planner, insists the Restoration Project will be different.

She noted that, unlike the previous effort, the project has brought together both regulators and the regulated.