Residents Protest Site for Septic Tank Sewage : Sanitation: They show up at a city-sponsored open house at the nearly completed facility at the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area. It’s on hold pending studies.

More than 100 people, some wearing paper surgical masks, gathered at the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area on Saturday to punctuate their opposition to a nearly completed central dumping site for septic tank sewage that has been put on hold pending environmental studies.

The Los Angeles City Council voted in November to delay for one year approval of the facility, situated within an existing water-treatment plant. Homeowners and environmentalists had successfully pointed out that the environmental report was made prior to construction of the $2-million facility.

A city-sponsored open house was held at the facility Saturday to describe--using maps and photographs--17 possible alternate disposal sites and to explain the review process.

But Peter Ireland of Van Nuys, president of the Coalition to Save Sepulveda Basin, said neighborhood groups were left out of the process of paring the list down from 70 sites to 17.

“They cannot be trusted now to be forthright,” Ireland said while standing next to five tall concrete stalls built to accommodate trucks that would dispose of residential septic waste from around the San Fernando Valley and nearby cities.

“If they don’t drop this site now, we will take the fight to the City Council and other government bodies,” Ireland said to television cameras and protesters who chanted “Save the basin, Dump the dump.”

Chris Harris, a public relations consultant for the project, told the crowd, “We are looking at all sites. . . . There is no predetermined decision that this (facility) will ever be used.”

The primary objections involved traffic--the estimated 90 to 200 daily truckloads of waste that would enter the parkland off Woodley Avenue--and potential contamination of parkland.

Septic waste is now dumped into manholes in the Valley area. Sanitation officials have said the central dumping site at the Donald C. Tillman Water Treatment Plant would allow them more control over what is dumped into city sewers and let them charge septic tank disposal companies for the real costs of treating the waste.

At a small building where the open house was held, at least two dozen protesters went inside to look at maps and fill out forms with their suggestions or objections.

Vicki Francis of HDR Engineering, a firm participating in the environmental review, said that on Wednesday engineers will start gathering samples at existing dumping sites. “We will see what they are actually dumping into the manholes,” Francis said.