Procrastination Fuels Problem at City Facilities

At a cost of at least $50,000, police cars, trash trucks and other vehicles at 40 city facilities will be gassed up from fuel trucks rather than underground tanks next week, because officials missed a federal anti-pollution deadline set 10 years ago.

The emergency program was ordered Wednesday by the Los Angeles City Council, because the city failed to replace older, leak-prone tanks with new double-lined vessels by an Environmental Protection Agency deadline of Dec. 22. Using older tanks will trigger fines of $11,000 to $20,000 per day.

The council approved spending $3.9 million on a no-bid basis to speed up the work, with many members complaining of bureaucratic bungling.

City Council members voiced anger and frustration at what they called mismanagement of a vital program.

“We have known about this deadline and mandate for 10 years,” Councilwoman Laura Chick said. “There is no excuse whatsoever that, here we are at the 13th hour, finding out, ‘Gee, we didn’t think of this.’ ”

Chick, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, told her colleagues Wednesday during a discussion concerning the issue that the program is “one of the biggest mismanaged messes I have ever seen.”

Also affected are fuel tank systems for emergency generators for the Los Angeles Police Department’s 911 system.

Fuel tanks will be temporarily closed on Tuesday at the West Valley, Devonshire, Harbor and Southwest police stations and Sanitation Bureau yards in the San Fernando Valley and north-central Los Angeles, according to Les Iden, assistant general manager of the city’s Fleet Services Division.

Until the more than 120 fuel and oil tanks at the 40 sites can be replaced--a process that takes about five weeks per site--mobile fuel tankers probably will be brought in to provide diesel to trash trucks and emergency generators at some facilities, while many police officers are being given credit cards to refuel their patrol cars at private service stations, Iden said.

“We feel confident we will have a solution in place by [Wednesday],” Iden said.

At the Devonshire Division station in Northridge, officers were to be issued credit cards and told to take their patrol cars to nearby gas stations for refueling, Sgt. Ron Kubitsky said.

The temporary solution is better than driving to the nearest city fuel station in Van Nuys and back, Kubitsky said. “That would cut down on our productivity. It would take an hour to drive to Van Nuys and back,” Kubitsky said.

In addition to credit cards and fuel trucks, some city vehicles will be assigned to other facilities to refuel, officials said. The EPA decided a decade ago to require that public and private fuel tanks be replaced within 10 years by double-lined tanks to eliminate leaking and ground water contamination.

Federal officials recently estimated that only slightly more than half of the private gas station operators have so far brought their tanks into compliance. The cost of replacing the tanks, testing the soil and installing leak detectors can run to $200,000 or more per gas station.

The city has spent $30 million so far to replace tanks or consolidate facilities so that some old tanks can be abandoned.

To date, 92 sites have been brought into compliance, but 40 others--most with multiple tanks--have not been, and won’t be replaced by Tuesday’s deadline.

“The diesel tank and fueling system for the emergency generator for LAPD 911 does not meet December 1998 requirements,” said Randall Bacon, the head of General Services, in a report to the council. “If this system is not upgraded, critical public safety response during a power outage will be negatively impacted.”

Iden downplayed the threat, saying the fuel tanks currently are full and can be used in an emergency, but any refills will have to be done with mobile tankers until a new piping system is installed.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas said the council loaded the responsible departments with other projects so the fuel-tank program was not a high enough priority. But he acknowledged the problem.

“It is agreed that there may have been some degree of dysfunctionality,” Ridley-Thomas said.

In addition to tardy planning, Police Chief Bernard Parks opposed closure of tanks at police stations when he took office last year, forcing officials to put the sites back into the replacement program last month.

Parks was concerned that police response times and operations could be jeopardized if officers have to drive to other city facilities to refuel patrol cars.

City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie said problems with the program warrant creation of a special task force to make sure the remaining tanks are replaced in a timely manner. The council voted Wednesday to create the oversight panel.

“That this is just discovered so late and is being dealt with in the 13th hour is an example of government not working right,” Chick said. “What kind of role model are we for the private sector, which has also been asked to comply.”