Hot Issue : Wachs Steamed Over Antiquated City Hall Heating-Cooling System

Some of the heating and cooling units at Los Angeles City Hall are so antiquated that they require around-the-clock supervision by 17 engineers, who are each paid $46,000 a year to make sure the systems do not overheat and erupt.

That makes Councilman Joel Wachs hot under the collar.

So Wachs, who is on a continuing high-profile crusade to make City Hall more efficient, called on the council Friday to hire a private firm to perform an energy audit of all 900 city-owned buildings.

He estimates that modernizing the systems can cut the city’s annual $37-million energy bill by 15% to 25%, or $5.5 million to $9.2 million.

Wachs, who represents parts of the east San Fernando Valley, launched his latest cost-cutting effort in classic Wachs’ fashion: Thursday he led a troop of reporters on a tour of the Civic Center’s basements to point out the deteriorating state of the monstrous machines.

“Time is really money in things like this,” he said, sweating through his dark suit from the sauna-like heat generated by an aging boiler.

Over the past two years, the veteran lawmaker and his staff members have turned a series of otherwise dull government cost-cutting proposals into media events, complete with visual demonstrations. In January, Wachs launched an effort to reduce city spending by holding a news conference amid stacks of office supplies that he said could be purchased at a nearby store for much less than what the city pays.

In February, he followed up with a news conference to cut down on unnecessary paperwork. To make his point, Wachs’ staff members displayed stacks of obsolete, yellowed and dusty-covered forms, some of which had been in warehouses because the city stopped using them years ago.

In his latest proposal, Wachs demonstrated his point by touring the heating and cooling equipment, which he said generates too much pollution and poses a potential safety hazard.

One of the city’s aging boilers, with steam shooting from its high-pressure pipes, operates under a City Hall building that houses a child-care center. “Such a risk is simply unacceptable,” Wachs said.

Jim Bumpus, an independent heating and cooling consultant who volunteered to help the city with the upgrading proposal, said the boiler under the child-care center was installed in the early 1950s and the potential for a ruptured steam pipe or a gas leak increases with age.

“The life expectancy of this industrial equipment is 25 years,” he said. “With age, you never know when you will get a major failure.”

But he added that the danger of an explosion would not pose a threat to City Hall employees or their children.

The boiler is watched 24 hours a day by engineers earning $45,899 a year, plus several supervisors who get paid $63,224 a year.

Wachs said he has talked to private firms willing to complete the audit, pay for the upfront cost of upgrading the systems and then wait to get paid for their services from the city’s savings on energy bills.

The Department of Water and Power, a semi-autonomous agency that provides power for the city, can provide a free audit of the city’s heating and cooling systems, DWP Chief Engineer Ken Miyoshi said.

But Miyoshi said no such audit had been done in the past 10 years because no one in city government has requested one.

Given the age of many city buildings and their equipment, he expressed skepticism the city can find a private firm willing to pay the upfront costs of a modernization program.

But Miyoshi said the DWP will aid in any efforts to become more cost-efficient. “We are willing to work with the city in any way we can,” he said.

Times staff writer Jean Merl contributed to this story.