Santa Monica Bay Water Quality

In a commentary on May 10, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Rolling Hills) claimed that an amendment I successfully offered to HR 961, the reauthorization of the Clean Water Act, would mean environmental harm to Santa Monica Bay. This is just plain wrong.

Strict water quality standards are set for specific pollutants at a level which the state determines is necessary to protect the ocean environment. The outflow from Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts’ waste water treatment plant and the Hyperion treatment plant of the City of Los Angeles meet, and often exceed by a wide margin, all state ocean plan and local water-quality standards--the same standards that would have to be met whether or not we require these two facilities to go to so-called “secondary” treatment.

Both the Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts employ chemically assisted primary treatment for all sewage. Part of that sewage also receives secondary treatment, a biological process where microbes are applied to digest the organic material that then settles to the bottom where it can be removed.

My amendment was tightly written to ensure that the marine environment off Los Angeles will be protected. The amendment allows a waiver from the full “secondary” requirement only when the facility meets all four of the following criteria: 1) all water quality standards, 2) it must actively monitor the effects of its treated discharge, 3) it must enforce industrial “pre-treatment” requirements, which ensure that toxic pollution is not being discharged and 4) it must use a chemically assisted level of treatment and remove more than 75% of the suspended solids from the effluent.

No one is advocating pumping untreated waste water into Santa Monica Bay, or off the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Going to “secondary” treatment will not have any further positive environmental benefit. Instead, for no good reason, we will be spending $400 million of your money--not federal dollars, but fees levied on local residents.

We simply cannot afford to be wasting money on problems that do not exist. It is time to lift the level of the debate above groundless attacks that distort the facts.

Rep. STEPHEN HORN

R-Long Beach

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Harman states: “A Playa del Rey developer . . . agreed to spend more than $10 million to restore the Ballona Wetlands.” The $10-million planned expenditure is not a voluntary contribution but is part of the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the most visible of the citizen groups opposed to the Playa Vista development. In return for the $10 million, the developer has won the group’s silence and has agreed not to build on a small fraction of the wetlands, even though restoration of that tiny portion will be impossible with such a vast development encroaching on it.

FRANCES LONGMIRE

Los Angeles

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Re “House Approves Overhaul of Clean Water Act,” May 17:

Despite the assurances of Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), when the revisions did indeed pass, this is not the will of the people as expressed in the Nov. 8 elections. For how can anyone except special interest polluters want to weaken a law that has been one of the most successful in environmental history?

The law can be fine-tuned to eliminate cases where individuals are the victims of excess regulations. But these sweeping changes are really not for individuals: They are for big polluters, who, it has been said, actually helped draft them.

In a world where both old diseases, such as cholera, are re-emerging and strange horrors such as Ebola are emerging, do we really want to let discharge of bacteria and viruses into our rivers, bays and oceans?

Our children and future generations will answer for the mistakes made today.

GEORGE HUNT

Van Nuys