Sewage Spills Into Ocean for Second Day : Environment: With sanitation facility overtaxed by rains, 6.5 million gallons of partially treated waste flow into Santa Monica Bay. Critics say city officials mishandled the opening of a new sewer line.

Millions of gallons of partially treated sewage flowed into Santa Monica Bay for the second day in a row Monday, prompting complaints that city sanitation officials mishandled the opening of a new sewer line serving the Hyperion Treatment Plant.

Health officials said beaches from Pacific Palisades to the Palos Verdes Peninsula, declared off limits since a spill on Friday, will remain closed today.

A spokeswoman for the Hyperion plant said that continued heavy rains forced sanitation officials to dump 6.5 million gallons of partially treated sewage into Ballona Creek on Sunday.

No estimates were available of the size of Monday’s spill, said Anna Sklar, the spokeswoman.

The latest discharges drew angry criticism from environmentalists, including one who accused the city of a blunder for having opened--and then closed--a new sewer line that was supposed to have ended the dumping of sewage into the bay.

“(The new sewer line) was built precisely to handle the kind of weather conditions we are now experiencing,” said Robert Sulnick, an official of the American Oceans Campaign, an environmental group.

A top city sanitation official shrugged off the criticism, saying that the latest discharges would have occurred regardless of whether the new line was operating.

“If we made mistakes--and I believe we did--it was in not adequately communicating with the public about what the problems were,” said Sam Furuta, assistant director of the Bureau of Sanitation.

Amid much fanfare, city officials in June opened the new $115-million North Outfall Replacement Sewer from the Crenshaw district to the Hyperion plant near Playa del Rey. The new line was supposed to end the dumping of sewage into the bay.

It can carry up to 850 million gallons a day during a major rainstorm.

But because extensive improvements to the Hyperion plant have not been completed, the facility cannot process more than 680 million gallons a day, officials said.

Officials closed the new sewer last month, fearing that heavy rains would cause waste water from the line to inundate the plant. Waste water was diverted back to the decrepit 65-year-old sewer that the new line is meant to replace.

Plans call for the new sewer to be reopened next summer, “meaning that we anticipate having it in place before the next likely period of heavy rainfall a year from now,” Furuta said.

Some critics, while saying they understood the city’s problem, faulted officials for not announcing the new sewer line’s closure earlier.

“We did not find out about the switch (until last Friday), and that was definitely a communications blunder by the city,” said Mark Gold, staff scientist for the environmental group Heal the Bay.

Gold said that surfers, drawn by some of the best waves in years, have flocked to the bay the last week.

“It would have made a difference because we would have known ahead of time and could have warned people to stay out of the water,” he said.

The latest spills bring to more than 16 million gallons the amount of sewage that has spilled into the ocean since Jan. 8, officials said. They represent the largest discharges since 60 million gallons spewed into the bay last February, closing beaches for 11 days.