PERSPECTIVE ON CLEAN WATER : A Sneak Attack on Our Bay : A favor to San Diego would also allow L.A. city and county to pump partially treated sewage into local waters.

On Memorial Day, millions of Americans will go to the beach to to enjoy the unofficial start of summer. Unfortunately, this Memorial Day, Southern Californians may be mourning the destruction of the Clean Water Act.

This week, the House will vote on the Clean Water Act Amendments of 1995. This bill is littered with provisions that will harm our nation’s waterways. Nowhere will this harm be felt more strongly than in Santa Monica Bay. One provision from Rep. Steve Horn (R-Long Beach) would allow partially treated sewage to be dumped into our local waters.

Two major sewage treatment plants (the city of Los Angeles Hyperion treatment plant in El Segundo and the county sanitation district’s plant in Carson) discharge sewage directly into the bay. Under the Clean Water Act, both entities are required to put sewage through full secondary treatment before discharging it. Horn’s exception would eliminate that requirement.

Primary treatment merely allows sewage to settle and then have solids removed, secondary treatment uses bacteria and other organisms to consume organic material. Studies have shown that secondary treatment removes close to 100% of viruses, while primary treatment removes only half. Thousands of people swim in Santa Monica Bay daily, some dive in the kelp beds near the county outfall off Palos Verdes and thousands more eat local seafood. Secondary treatment matters.

After the Clean Water Act passed, both the city and county sought waivers from its secondary-treatment requirements, but both had their applications denied by the Environmental Protection Agency because they could not meet health, safety and environmental standards. Both entities were eventually sued to comply with the Clean Water Act, and both entered into consent decrees agreeing to provide full secondary treatment.

Since then, the city of Los Angeles has spent more than $2 billion to bring Hyperion to the brink of full secondary treatment. City taxpayers voted twice to issue bonds to pay for these efforts. Horn’s waiver provision would exempt the city and county from secondary-treatment requirements.

Proponents of the Horn provision claim that because San Diego is in line to get an exemption, requiring Los Angeles to achieve secondary treatment would place it at an economic disadvantage because of the extra costs. Relaxing the requirements for the bay is not the way to level the field.

If a waiver for San Diego would create a disadvantage for Los Angeles, then eliminate that exemption, don’t create more pollution. What’s more, increased pollution in the bay will hurt the economy by keeping tourists away.

Horn argues that “good science” dictates that there is no need to achieve secondary treatment. However, EPA scientists say that Horn fails to take into account the volume and concentration of suspended solids, which will cause unsafe levels of pollution.

While this bill will harm Santa Monica Bay, it will also cause tremendous damage elsewhere by dismantling the Clean Water Act’s storm water and wetlands programs. Such disdain for these safeguards is especially troubling in Los Angeles where storm runoff is now recognized as a major threat to the bay. And, without the act’s wetlands protections, it is doubtful that a developer would have ever agreed to spend more than $10 million to restore the Ballona Wetlands.

Without strong water protections, clean oceans, lakes and rivers may just be a memory for future generations.