Valleywide : Report Urges Fees for Septic Tank Haulers

The city’s top financial officer on Wednesday warned that Los Angeles’ policy of accepting septic tank waste free of charge is costing sewer customers nearly $2 million a year.

In a letter to Mayor Richard Riordan and the City Council, City Controller Rick Tuttle said the city is loosing $1.8 million a year by processing waste from septic tank users in the San Fernando Valley and surrounding cities.

The septic tank waste is trucked by professional waste haulers to several sites throughout the city, where the waste is pumped into the sewer system.

“I urge the mayor and council to take immediate steps to obtain full cost recovery for the disposal of septic tank and other liquid wastes that today are being dumped into the city’s sewers at six largely unregulated sites,” Tuttle wrote in his letter dated Wednesday.

The letter continues: “City residents tied into the sewer system now subsidize the costs of disposal from waste generated by those not paying sewer service charges, including waste generators located outside the city.”

In a Jan. 30 report to Tuttle, Del Biagi, director of the Bureau of Sanitation, stated that the city could charge septic waste haulers $2.1 million to $3 million a year for the right to dispose of waste, depending on how many collection facilities the city decides to maintain. That charge would cover the cost of treating the sewage and maintaining the facilities.

Currently, the city is considering where to build one or more collection facilities and how many should be built. Tuttle’s letter indicates that the more facilities the city has, the greater the expensive to maintain them.