Testing the Waters : Homeowners Say Filtration Plants Are All Wet, Ask Lawmakers to Step In

In a continuing campaign to stop construction of water filtration plants near the Encino Reservoir and two other water supply lakes, homeowner activists from affluent neighborhoods are reaching out to lawmakers to try to roll back health regulations that require the plants be built.

The homeowners fear that the plants--each about five acres--would lower property values, spoil lake views and pose a health hazard because of storage and use of chemical disinfectants.

They also have criticized the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for refusing to support their lobbying efforts, despite the fact that the plants together could cost more than $400 million.

The plants would provide added treatment for water from large open storage lakes--the Stone Canyon, Hollywood and Encino reservoirs--that are vulnerable to contamination from storm runoff, bird droppings and air pollution.

But opponents say the plants might not improve water quality significantly.

Water officials “probably don’t know if there will be any improvement” in water quality “that’s worth talking about,” said Jerry Daniel of the Roscomare Valley Assn., a group of Bel-Air homeowners near the upper and lower Stone Canyon reservoirs.

Nonetheless, Daniel said, the DWP is “not saying boo . . . or helping us politically to turn it around.”

DWP officials--who have at times been accused of putting fiscal concerns ahead of public health needs--say they are resigned to the costs because the plants are needed.

The filtration plants “would be of substantial benefit to the people of Los Angeles,” said Bruce Kuebler, director of water quality for the DWP.

“We don’t have enough controls” on open reservoirs, so “the water that we’re providing at times doesn’t meet our customers’ expectations for taste, odor and color.”

Kuebler said the plants, to be built during the next eight to 10 years, would increase water rates by an undetermined amount.

Daniel and other opponents recently held meetings with state Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood) and with Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), who is chairman of the House subcommittee on health and environment and an advocate of tough drinking water standards. Daniel and Albert Glazerman of the Encino Lake Homeowners Assn. said they are contacting other political figures.

“We may be fighting a losing battle, but we’re not going to go down easy,” Daniel said.

Waxman said through an aide that he is studying the issue but that the opinions of water and environmental officials have made “a strong impression” on him.

“I take it very seriously that the experts at EPA and also . . . the Department of Water and Power have found filtration is necessary to protect the public health,” Waxman said.

Friedman said he and his staff “are still reviewing everything and at this point don’t have a position.”

Homeowners’ opposition to the filtration plants is not unanimous. After meetings with DWP officials run by professional mediators, some homeowner leaders have come to view the plants as necessary evils.

Gerald A. Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, said filtration plant opponents “are willing to sacrifice the greater good.”

“This is a throwback, it’s illogical,” Silver said. “Here are homeowners arguing against the best interests of the community.”

Water filtration is required by two sets of government rules: a regulation adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1989 and a more sweeping state mandate that took effect in 1991.

The state rule requires filtration at all reservoirs subject to surface runoff. The federal rule exempted water systems that met a battery of quality standards.

Acknowledging that they greatly underestimated the cost of filtration plants, officials with the state Department of Health Services are planning to revise their rule to conform more closely with the federal requirement. Then filtration would not be required for water meeting the various test standards.

But Kuebler and Gary Yamamoto, district engineer for the state health department’s office of drinking water, said the proposed state revisions won’t help the DWP because the agency does not qualify for the federal exemption.

In particular, Kuebler said, in the DWP system chlorine is in contact with the reservoir water for too short a time before the water reaches the first customers.

The three reservoirs supply water to about one-fifth of the DWP’s 3.5 million customers, mainly in Hollywood, the Westside and portions of the San Fernando Valley.

Although the rules require water filtration by June 29, DWP officials are still negotiating with neighbors and conducting planning studies and won’t even break ground by the deadline.

As a result, the DWP will be required to provide periodic notice in customers’ bills that it has not complied with the rules.