Coming Soon to a Large Park Close to You: Septic Tank Waste : From 90 to 200 sanitation trucks will travel daily to a dump site near Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.

Fiorello LaGuardia, the charismatic mayor of New York City in the ‘30s, was a lovable, sharp-tongued, honest politician. Once, when he screwed up badly, he laughed and said, “When I make a mistake it’s a beaut!”

Well, the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation has made a beaut. Here’s the story.

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Septic tanks are common in outlying parts of Greater Los Angeles where there is no sewer system. Periodically, vehicles that resemble gasoline trucks have to pump out the wastes and dispose of them.

For years these tank trucks in the Los Angeles area have disposed of their fragrant loads by pumping them into designated manholes in the street. Underneath the holes are big pipes leading to the Hyperion sewage plant in Playa Del Rey.

The bureau was concerned that it was unable to keep illegal poisons out of the system, so it came up with what must have seemed like a great idea. That was to seal off the special manholes and send all the tank trucks to one location for dumping where their contents could be monitored.

The chosen location? The Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, the Valley’s largest and most widely used park.

When the wind is right, neighbors already are breathing the effluvium that wafts to them from the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in the basin. The new pump site is adjacent to Tillman, although functionally not connected to it, and can only increase the public nuisance.

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The Sanitation Bureau estimates that 90 to 200 tank trucks a day will come into the basin from all points of the compass. One from Malibu will come 30 to 40 miles over winding, two-lane Malibu Canyon Road to the Ventura Freeway, then the San Diego Freeway, exiting at Burbank Boulevard. It will have to cut through the heart of the basin’s open space and rumble past the picnic area in Woodley Park. Hardly an inducement for a family outing.

Think of the waste of time and the increased pollution from 90 to 200 trucks burning up fuel on our crowded freeways. The trucks will have to return to their home base, of course, so then we will have 180 to 400 trips of these big, unattractive vehicles adding to our normal freeway headaches. (Today we rarely see septic tank trucks on the freeways, since they can use the manholes in their own areas.)

Does this project make sense to anyone? It blights a prime recreation area. It exposes residents to pestilential odors. It adds traffic to clogged highways. It introduces more pollution into the dirtiest airspace in the nation.

This receiving structure is already built! When the decision was made, the public was not at the table.

Because the city exempted the project from doing so, the Bureau of Sanitation was not required to write an environmental impact report, which would have discussed all the negative features.

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An EIR, according to state law, must consider alternatives. For example, why only one disposal point in this vasA. area? Why not three or four, closer to the septic tanks but away from homes.

It is not too late to reverse this colossal error, even though the facility stands ready. A legal appeal has delayed the opening of the facility. The decision rests with the City Council, whose Planning and Land Use Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday. Time is short. Supporters of civic sanity, EIRs and sweet-smelling parks will know what to do to make their views known. As Ben Franklin said, a word to the wise is sufficient.