Sewage Spill Resumes After Repaired Pipe Ruptures

Not two hours after crews had frantically worked to fix a ruptured sewer line before the oncoming storm, the repair burst open early Friday.

Raw sewage will continue gushing down a narrow canyon toward the ocean until the middle of next week, city officials predicted.

By then, 48 million to 54 million gallons of untreated effluent could spew into Mugu Lagoon and the Pacific, 17 miles downstream from a damaged 30-inch line that opened during Tuesday’s powerful storm.

At a special City Council meeting Friday, Public Works Director Don Nelson delivered a grim chronology of the accident.

He said city employees and contractors had expected to stem the leak in the line leading to the Hill Canyon Wastewater Treatment Plant by dawn Friday.

By 5 a.m., workers--who had labored through the night in the dank, flooded canyon--replaced two missing sections of concrete pipe, sheathed them with corrugated steel and coated them with 140 yards of fresh concrete.

When the rains resumed an hour and 45 minutes later, the concrete was nowhere close to dry. The repair burst, unleashing a flood of waste into the Arroyo Conejo. The deluge also washed out a makeshift road that workers had hastily built to reach the damaged line.

“We started to build pressure in the line again and it exploded,” said a haggard-looking Nelson. “Everything we have done is for naught. We lost the road and had a failure in the same location.”

Because long, narrow Hill Canyon will remain flooded until this bout of storms ends, Nelson said that his crews would be unable to even reach the damaged line until Sunday.

In the meantime, 6 million gallons of raw sewage will flow unimpeded each day.

Nelson said the line could be repaired by Wednesday or Thursday “at the absolute earliest.” The completion date hinges on the rain and the extent of damage--and whether the line is ruptured in more than one place.

“It’s basically time to pray and ask God to let up a bit,” said Councilwoman Judy Lazar after hearing the report.

The sewage onslaught worried public health officials, who urged people to stay clear of the waste-swollen waterways and the ocean. Environmentalists also sounded an alarm, saying the effluent could seriously damage the delicate Mugu Lagoon, home to a rich variety of marine animals.

“This sounds more and more dire all the time,” said John Buse, staff attorney for the Environmental Defense Center in Ventura. “It’s an environmental disaster--there’s no other way to describe it. . . . We have a very unfortunate situation if this could have been avoided.”

Some city officials and residents tried to place blame for the sewer failure during the morning meeting.

Replacing the line was first proposed in 1987 but, through the years, the project was sidetracked.

“It has never been a line in peril or jeopardy,” Nelson said. “It’s been a line we knew we had to replace. If we thought a failure was imminent, we would have taken immediate action to correct it.”

A few speakers suggested that $1.3 million earmarked for the line had been diverted to construction of the Civic Arts Plaza. However, Nelson said the line wasn’t funded because of the city’s internal two-year fight over its sewer improvement program. Increased fees approved last summer would have allowed the city to issue bonds for the improvements, he said.

Whatever the cause of the problem, health officials Friday said Ventura County beaches within 10 miles of Point Mugu will remain closed at least 72 hours after the sewage spill is stopped.

Nine miles of Los Angeles County beaches will likely remain shut until the rain abates, officials said.

However, testing at Leo Carrillo and other beaches did not show excessive bacteria levels on Thursday, said Jack Petralia, director of environmental protection in Los Angeles County’s Department of Health Services.

Still, officials warned of potential harm from the murky water rushing from Hill Canyon into the Conejo Creek, the Calleguas Creek and, ultimately, Mugu Lagoon and the ocean. Although it’s diluted with rainwater, the sewage-infused brew carries bacteria that can cause stomach flu, hepatitis, dysentery, and typhoid fever.

The waste water’s effects on the Mugu Lagoon could be equally severe, environmentalists warned.

Morgan Wehtje, a biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game, said algae populations thriving on sewage could eventually “suck out all the oxygen and can harm aquatic life. You could see big fish kills if enough nutrients are there.”

Shellfish, seaworms and a variety of birds could suffer if there is not enough rain to scour the waste from the lagoon, added Tom Keeney, Point Mugu’s natural resources director. Keeney said he will seek funding to study the effects of the sewage on Magu Lagoon’s environmentally sensitive wetlands.

“The more it continues to come down, the more severe it’s going to get over time, assuming it stays in the lagoon,” he said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Seasonal County Rainfall

Here are rainfall figures, in inches, for the past year. Oct. 1 is the start of the official rain year. Also shown are the maximum rainfall amounts and the year in which they occurred. With the El Nino weather pattern now in the Pacific Ocean, many weather experts are predicting record rainfall throughout California. The last El Nino, in 1983, produced many of the record rainfalls below.

*--*

Rainfall Normal Percent of since rainfall normal Maximum Rainfall Location Oct. 1, 1996 to date rainfall Year amount Camarillo 17.27 7.79 222% 1941 33.43 Casitas Dam 27.87 13.47 207% 1983 51.13 Casitas Rec. 26.93 13.39 201% * * Center Fillmore 20.35 10.91 187% 1983 42.30 Matilija Dam 27.61 15.14 182% 1969 70.04 Moorpark 17.80 8.43 211% 1983 32.48 Ojai 22.24 12.04 185% 1978 48.60 Upper Ojai 24.41 12.95 188% 1969 56.58 Oxnard 22.10 8.28 267% 1941 38.17 Piru 17.15 9.82 175% 1983 40.36 Port Hueneme 19.91 8.14 245% 1941 32.99 Santa Paula 19.45 10.10 193% 1983 38.03 Simi Valley 16.84 8.09 208% 1983 35.06 Thousand Oaks 18.15 8.72 208% 1983 32.75 Ventura Govt. 24.81 9.16 264% 1941 39.95 Center

*--*

* Maximum rainfall amounts not available for all locations.

Source: Ventura County Flood Control District