The City’s Whitewash of Water Issues Must End

The U.S. Department of Justice’s decision to sue the city of Los Angeles over the city’s failure to correct endemic problems with its sewer system puts a much-needed spotlight on the city’s water quality record. The fact is that the city’s failure to maintain an aging sewer system, which frequently leaks into city streets and then into the ocean via storm drains, is but one example of the city’s disturbing hostility toward the federal Clean Water Act, one of the nation’s landmark environmental laws.

The city’s anti-Clean Water Act activities are little known because city bureaucrats and their attorneys until now have been shrewd in publicly taking credit for their accomplishments while attacking the act mostly in clandestine ways. Most prominently, the city constantly trumpets its $1.6-billion investment in upgrading the Hyperion sewage treatment facility near Los Angeles International Airport as an example of its progressive clean-water agenda. Ironically, while the city deserves credit for making this important investment, it is often forgotten that the city only moved to upgrade Hyperion when forced to do so by a federal lawsuit much like the one the Justice Department filed on Jan. 8 to correct sewage spills. Likewise, in publicly defending itself against the Justice Department’s most recent charges, the city takes credit for steps--including a proposed ordinance to prevent grease from clogging sewer pipes--that were motivated in large part by litigation filed two years ago by an environmental group, Santa Monica Baykeeper.

Even giving the city full credit for improvements it has made, this is not close to the whole story. Quietly and out of the public’s view, city staffers regularly take positions in favor of dirtier water.

For example, the city supported efforts in 1998 to remove certain water quality protections that apply to the Los Angeles River. The resulting fight with environmentalists was conducted before relatively obscure agencies like the office of administrative law. Likewise, the city’s current opposition to proposed rules to clean up the colossal trash problem in the Los Angeles River has been voiced so far mostly in behind-the-scenes meetings. Residents of Los Angeles likely have no idea that the city is leading an effort to hamstring these new rules, which are an integral part of widely supported efforts to restore the river as a resource for the region.

Perhaps the most insidious of the city’s tactics is its support of a new breed of direct litigation attacks on efforts by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state water board to implement the Clean Water Act. Instead of suing the EPA and the water board in its own name, however--a step that would surely draw attention--the city instead has joined obscure, nonprofit organizations that file the lawsuits for it.

A prominent example of this “litigation laundering” is a recent lawsuit brought by the Southern California Alliance of Publicly Owned Treatment Works, of which the city is a prominent member. In 1999, SCAP, as the organization is known, filed a lawsuit aimed at stopping new efforts by the EPA to revitalize the state’s most polluted waters, including many in the Los Angeles area, such as Santa Monica Bay. SCAP lost this case last August when a Superior Court judge in Sacramento ruled against it on all counts. Not only is the city a dues-paying supporter of SCAP, but the city’s Bureau of Sanitation director serves as vice president of SCAP’s board of directors. SCAP also identifies the city as a member of its litigation task force.

If it weren’t for its hubris in refusing to resolve the sewage spill problems highlighted by the Baykeeper group and the Justice Department, the city may have been able to continue to fly under the radar. The city’s tactical misjudgment has laid bare its approach for all to see.

The time has come for the city to come clean--in more ways than one.