PANORAMA CITY : Court Date Set for Apartment Owners

The owners of an apartment complex on beleaguered Blythe Street have been charged with allegedly disregarding repeated orders to stop the flow of raw sewage from broken pipes into the street.

“Blythe Street is not a nice place to live, but no one should have to live with this stuff,” Deputy City Atty. Don Cocek said. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Brian and Molly Zimmerman and William and Philomena Bradford, all of whom live in Westlake Village, were named in the seven-count complaint of illegal sewage discharge in Van Nuys Municipal Court on Thursday. If convicted, they each face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Penalty assessments could bring the fine up to $20,000 combined for the four, Cocek said.

But one owner, William Bradford, reached Thursday night at his home, denied that the orders had been ignored. He said the real problem was not faulty pipes, but repeated vandalism that the Bradfords and the Zimmermans have found impossible to keep up with.

Bradford said he thought that neighborhood youths were removing manhole covers and breaking sewage pipes.

“I can’t keep repairing it no more, I’ve repaired it again four times,” he said. He said the pipes had been fixed as of Tuesday, and the site cleaned thoroughly by a manager at the complex.

Pools of toilet paper and fecal matter were reportedly left in the street near the apartment complex after sewage pipes on the property broke, Cocek said. Health inspectors called to the scene in response to a complaint Aug. 23 found raw sewage welling up into the street from a broken underground pipe, said Carl Charles, a bureau director with the Los Angeles County Health Services Environmental Health Division.

The inspectors issued emergency orders for the discharge to cease. A follow-up inspection the next day revealed that the flow of sewage had been stopped, but that the previous day’s mess remained, said Charles.

A week later, inspectors responding to another complaint found the pipes had apparently broken again and raw sewage had again been allowed to flow in the street, he said. Inspectors on subsequent days found that the owners had not complied with orders to clean up the spill, prompting the city to resort to criminal charges, he said.

Charles said the leakage apparently did not affect the interior of the complex, a two-story pink structure covered with graffiti.

No sewage mess was visible on Blythe Street Thursday, but several youths standing on the sidewalk near the apartment said bad odors and dark, smelly water flowing in the gutters are common there.

“It stinks. You come here in the afternoon and they be stinking this street up real bad,” said 19-year-old neighbor Joe Ramirez.

The Bradfords and the Zimmermans are scheduled for arraignment Oct. 12.