Water Agency Enforcement Is Called Lax

A local environmental group is contending that the state agency charged with safeguarding water quality in Los Angeles and Ventura counties has failed to effectively enforce anti-pollution laws.

In a study released Thursday, Heal the Bay charges that in spite of pollution problems in 40% of the area’s water bodies, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board has taken action against polluters only 14 times in the past six years, levying fines of $578,000.

But using a combination of the water board’s documents, other state reports and site inspections, Heal the Bay says it has found as many as 9,000 pollution violations--some minor, some serious--such as sewage and hazardous materials spills, failure to secure storm drain permits, septic system overflows and improper pollution discharges directly into area waters.

Dennis Dickerson, who took over as executive officer of the board seven months ago, strongly disagreed with the notion that the board has been lax. He said he could not address the report’s specifics because he had not received a copy.

“We do have an active, strong enforcement program in place,” he said. “It’s so easy to put out facts like this and yet the context is missing. It’s very difficult to respond because of that.”

The environmentalists assert that the agency has failed to deter polluters by not acting on violations. And without the money generated by fines, they say, the state is deprived of additional funds to protect and rehabilitate ailing waterways.

“Polluters can get away with pollution,” said Mark Gold, Heal the Bay’s executive director. “It pays to pollute within this region.”

For their study, Heal the Bay relied mostly on reports filed by sewage treatment plants, industrial dischargers and others required under law to record their compliance with state permits.

And what it found was that the few times the board did assess fines, the dollar amounts were vastly lower than the maximum allowable.

In one instance, the board in 1993 fined Wilmington Liquid Bulk Terminals $170,000 for discharging more than 1.3 million gallons of waste water into Dominguez Channel over two months. Based on state code, that fine could have been as high as $13.2 million, the study contends.

Chris Peck, a spokesman for the California Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the regional and state boards, said fines are not the only way to assess enforcement.

“You could come up with a huge number if you add up the maximum fines and multiply it out by the violations, but is that the way to get improved water quality in California?” Peck asked. “Levying a penalty or fine against somebody is not necessarily the first step you take in the enforcement process.”

Heal the Bay’s findings about the regional board, which is appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson, follows a scathing state audit and an ongoing federal criminal probe.

That report, detailed by The Times a year ago, charged that the board failed to act on leaking underground fuel tanks for up to 12 years and continued to use a private laboratory that acknowledged misrepresenting contamination tests. Further allegations charged staff members with taking kickbacks from private contractors and profiting by investing in polluted properties.

The governor’s office said Wednesday that it had not received a copy of Heal the Bay’s report, but took exception to any inference that Wilson’s appointees are lax in their stewardship of the state’s water quality.

“If anything, the state is criticized for having overzealous enforcement on water control issues,” said Wilson spokesman Sean Walsh. “It’s a typical environmental gig. They put something out, try to get a great deal of hoopla, but don’t afford us the opportunity to analyze their charges, which generally turn out to be unfounded.”

Heal the Bay’s study saves its harshest criticism for actions that it says the board failed to take.

Concerning spills during the last six years, the group used the board’s monthly spill lists to document 2,194 hazardous-materials overflows, totaling more than 28 million gallons of pollution: 464 sewage spills, 1,355 oil spills and 375 chemical spills. About a quarter of those spills reached area waterways, the report contends.

During that period, however, the board issued penalties in four instances, ignoring the region’s biggest offenders in terms of number of spills, the study contends.

That includes Los Angeles County’s reports of spilling more than 6.5 million gallons of sewage, the city of Los Angeles’ reports of spilling more than 10.5 million gallons of sewage and Texaco’s reports of spilling almost 200,000 gallons of oil.