Big L.A. Sewage Spill Raises Concern Over Y2K Readiness

Raising concerns about local governments’ ability to handle the year 2000 computer problem, a test of the emergency system at a Los Angeles sanitation plant went awry Wednesday night, spilling about 4 million gallons of untreated sewage into part of the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area before officials could stop it.

Officials at the San Fernando Valley plant had been testing a backup electricity system in anticipation of a possible Y2K power outage when they learned from a park ranger shortly after midnight that sewage was gushing from a maintenance hole in the 2,100-acre recreation area.

City and commercial crews largely succeeded in corralling the stream of sewage flowing into the recreation area and kept it away from the Los Angeles River, a nearby golf course and a popular Japanese garden where two weddings are scheduled for this weekend.

Workers toiled through the night with high-powered vacuum cleaners to remove the waste from park grass. Street sweepers with water hoses cleared raw sewage from the street. As a precaution, 10 acres of Woodley Avenue Park, a grassy picnic area, were closed for the weekend.

But health officials say the spill posed little danger to the public. The bacteria from any remaining sewage will be burned off by the sun’s ultraviolet rays, experts say.

“If there is skin contact, generally the worst that could happen is just a rash,” said Jack Petralia, director of the county Bureau of Environmental Protection. “We brought some specialists out who said the best thing we can do is let the sun burn off all of the bacteria,” said Steve Soboroff, president of the city Parks Commission.

Meanwhile, the odor “wasn’t pleasant, that’s for sure,” said Caroline Piligra, who lives in Van Nuys, across the freeway from the treatment plant. The smell, she said, lingered into Thursday night.

The biggest sanitation agency in Orange County said it is on schedule with Y2K computer testing and is optimistic that it will avoid any problems.

In fact, the Orange County Sanitation District’s only concern has nothing to do with computers adjusting to the year 2000. It is a prolonged power outage that worries district officials.

The district, which serves 2.2 million customers, has relied on backup electrical systems to survive outages, including one that hit seven Western states in 1996.

Thursday’s sewage spill in Los Angeles “probably could not happen here,” said Patrick Miles, the district’s director of information technology.

“But because of the nature of Y2K,” Miles said, “there is a low-level probability of something happening if there were a prolonged power outage.”

In an emergency, the agency has three sources of power: Southern California Edison, diesel-powered generators and bio-gas, which is a methane byproduct from sewage. But those sources are limited.

“We can be totally self-sufficient,” said Robert Thompson, the agency’s Y2K manager. If the agency had a supply of natural gas, it could continue operations indefinitely.

The state regulatory agency overseeing sanitation agencies in Southern California commended the local district’s testing.

“We’ve been encouraging the sewage treatment community to address the issue seriously and to try and take care of it because there definitely is a potential for problems,” said Kurt Berchtold, a Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board spokesman in Riverside.

Enforcement action will be taken against agencies that have sewage spills because of Y2K problems, Berchtold said.

Meanwhile, Orange County’s testing for Y2K compliance has revealed no major problems.

“Every computer system is on schedule to be completely tested by early fall,” said Leo E. Crawford, the county’s chief information officer, “But I’m the first to admit that when I say that everything will be fine, when you have tens of millions of lines of computer codes, there’s a very good chance we will miss something.”

Of 9,000 computers tested, about 200 have had to be replaced, Crawford said.

Computers handling critical operations, such as the emergency 911 system, have been given priority, Crawford said.

Wednesday’s spill in Los Angeles occurred when a gate controlling the transfer of sewage from a large pipeline was mistakenly closed during the test, backing up sewage to street level for about two hours. Officials traced the malfunction to a programmer’s error made in 1985.

Judy Wilson, director of the city Sanitation Bureau, said she has ordered a review of the computer programs for all gates in the city sewer system. City officials said the problem can be fixed quickly and should not present a threat when computer clocks strike 12 a.m. Jan. 1.

“I have every confidence that once we figure out what the logic problem is with this gate, we can fix it very easily,” Wilson said. “It just underscores the importance of doing real-time testing rather than tabletop exercises.”

Mayor Richard Riordan also gave assurances that the problems will be addressed. Los Angeles has been testing Y2K readiness for two years and has experienced some minor glitches.

“I have instructed the bureau to thoroughly investigate the circumstances so that when they conduct future tests we can avoid repeating similar occurrences,” Riordan said. “Overall, the city is confident that its critical systems will be ready and operational for Y2K rollover, and we are continuing our contingency plans.”

The Y2K problem stems from the use of two digits to represent years in computer programming. In 2000, computer systems could become confused over the date “00,” which could be read as either 1900 or 2000, resulting in malfunctions or miscalculations.

The sewage spill, which the city estimates will cost less than $100,000 to clean up, has worried some environmental groups.

Mark Gold of Heal the Bay, a Santa Monica environmental group, said he has talked with the city about fears over trouble at the massive Hyperion sewage treatment plant. A malfunction there could dump sewage into Santa Monica Bay.

Gold said the spill at the much-smaller Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant, which treats about 65 million gallons of sewage a day, is a sign that the city’s preparations may not be well planned.

Officials at Tillman had not placed any monitors at the surface during the testing, nor was there any electronic warning that the gate malfunctioned.

“So you’re doing this test at midnight and you don’t have people on the surface?” Gold said. “That doesn’t sound like good planning to me. There definitely is a lot of concern, because of the complex, technical nature of these plants. A lot can go wrong.”

Curtis Paxton, the plant’s assistant manager, said no one was assigned to monitor the park, checking for spills, because “we hadn’t had any trouble before.”

John Norton, the official in charge of enforcement and compliance issues for the State Water Resources Control Board, said the Tillman spill was the first Y2K failure among waste-water plants in California. State water officials have the power to fine local agencies and are monitoring Y2K compliance by sewage treatment plants in hopes of avoiding spills next year.

Times staff writers David Reyes, Agnes Diggs, Irene Garcia, Annette Kondo, Hilary MacGregor and Martha L. Willman contributed to this story.