Extension of City Sewage Contract Delayed After Protests From Wachs

The city’s Board of Public Works on Friday postponed approval of a $36.8-million sewage contract because Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs charged that the deal is fraught with inflated costs and possible conflicts of interest.

Board President Felicia Marcus said a delay will allow Wachs and the City Council to review a proposal for a three-year extension of an existing contract with Montgomery Watson Americas Inc., a Pasadena-based engineering firm that advises the city on construction of its multibillion-dollar sewage-treatment system.

The public works panel “would love to brief the council” on the Montgomery contract, Marcus said. “The people I trust feel very comfortable with it,” she said.

Montgomery executive Don Bassett denied Wachs’ charges, which represent the San Fernando Valley lawmaker’s latest complaints that the city’s waste-water treatment program is out of control.

But Wachs, who represents the central and northeast Valley, said in an interview that several “whistle-blower” employees of the city’s Bureau of Engineering--whom he declined to name--have raised “serious questions . . . about overhead costs and possible conflicts of interest.”

Without providing details, Wachs said his sources charge that Montgomery’s fees are too high and they challenge the propriety of allowing Montgomery to represent the city before state and federal agencies that regulate and shape the city’s expensive sewage-treatment program.

The city’s huge Hyperion waste-treatment plant is being built to comply with federal rules requiring the city to clean up the water in Santa Monica Bay, where treated waste water is discharged.

“The question is: Is Montgomery representing the city, or is there an incentive for them to agree to more work than is needed because they know they’ll get the work?” Wachs told reporters Friday.

Questions about the Montgomery contract are particularly compelling now, Wachs said, because “it is no secret that sewer service charges have reached an all-time high, and the public’s frustration level has reached a boiling point.”

The sewer charges pay for the upgrading of the city’s sewage-treatment plant in Playa del Rey, including the work performed by Montgomery.

But Bassett said his firm has been “on budget” with its existing contract and that its costs have been carefully monitored by city officials. “There’s just no foundation to this allegation,” he said.

Bassett also denied Wachs’ references to conflicts of interest. “We are not in a position to create work for ourselves,” he said. “The ultimate, critical decisions are made by the city.”

Wachs accused the city’s Board of Public Works of seeking to violate the spirit of a City Charter provision that requires council approval of contracts longer than three years, by breaking a planned nine-year relationship with Montgomery into three-year segments. Contracts for periods shorter than three years need not be reviewed by the council.

The pending Montgomery contract would be for three years, and thus does not require council review.

“The effect of an appointed board being able to grant virtual monopolies to favored contractors is to completely take away the people’s right to have a voice in making decisions which significantly affect their utility bills,” Wachs said in a letter to the board.

Montgomery’s current contract as a consultant to the Bureau of Engineering is for $56 million.

A report by the bureau, urging extension of the contract, says there is a continuing need for the consultants.

Bruce Rollo, the head of the bureau’s waste-water division, explained Friday that Montgomery’s job is to provide the city with engineering expertise on the design and construction of the high-tech Hyperion plant that the bureau’s employees do not have.

Rollo defended the contract, saying Montgomery is “performing per the contract and doing a very competent job. I know of no major problems.”