Changes at Sewer Plant Win Council Approval

Plans for an 86-foot-tall tower and a water pump station for the sewer treatment plant on Brookhurst Street near Pacific Coast Highway were approved this week by the City Council.

As a condition of its approval of the $6-million project, the council required the Orange County Sanitation Districts to make landscaping improvements.

The agency has a $2-million landscaping plan, which the city is helping to develop, said Tom Dawes, agency planning engineer.

Dawes said the agency’s goal is make the plant look like an industrial park.

“I believe it’s never going to be possible to hide that plant,” he said. “But it is possible to do screening to make it look better, and that’s what we want to do.”

The surge tower, next to the Santa Ana River and about 1,200 feet from Pacific Coast Highway, will relieve high water pressure to prevent damage to pipes that carry treated waste water to the ocean, Dawes said.

The 3,200-square-foot water pump station will be next to Brookhurst Avenue.

Mary Beth Broeren, city associate planner, said the landscaping along the Santa Ana River channel and the southeastern edge of the 109-acre plant, built in 1954, will improve views from the coastal highway.

The landscaping must be completed by 1998, when the tower also is expected to be finished, she said.

New landscaping also will be placed on Brookhurst Street to screen the new pump station, to be built within the next year.