City Council Demands Report on Sewage Spill

The Los Angeles City Council voted Friday to ask for a report on last week’s 4-million-gallon sewage spill at the Tillman Water Treatment Plant in Van Nuys. The spill was triggered by a test of the plant’s year 2000 computer readiness.

The motion asked that the report be provided to the council by the city sanitation bureau as quickly as possible and include “what specific steps will be taken to prevent its recurrence.” Also requested was a determination on “whether similar problems exist at the city’s other sewage treatment plants.”

Bureau managers have said faulty computer programming language caused a gate on a sewage pipe to close during a test of the Tillman plant’s emergency generator, which in turn triggered an overflow of sewage into Woodley Avenue Park.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe and Mayor Richard Riordan on Friday announced a joint initiative between the city, county and private industry to prepare for potential problems with the rollover to 2000.

Joined by John Koskinen, chairman of the President’s Council on Year 2000 Conversion, the leaders said the Los Angeles Millennium Management Leadership Team will coordinate efforts and share information among scores of agencies.

The county has so far spent $155 million and the city has doled out $110 million to fix computers misreading the year 2000 as 1900, according to Riordan and Knabe.