Newport Failed to Test Sewer Sludge

Newport Beach officials said Tuesday they are investigating why the city dumped large amounts of sewer sludge into an Irvine landfill for the last 12 years without first screening the materials for toxic metals, as required by state water regulations.

Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff estimated that 140 tons of the sludge was improperly dumped since 1990. He said he doubted the dumping did much harm to the environment but said the staff is now testing the material and getting permission before disposing of it.

“I believe this was an honest mistake. People in the general services yard were supposed to be testing this before they took it to a landfill,” Kiff said. “We want to investigate whether anyone knew about it earlier and didn’t say anything.

“Either way, we shouldn’t have been doing it. We’re repentant. We’d like to think of ourselves as respective of the environment. And we’ve screwed up here, so we’d like to make it right.”

The debris in question includes sand, eggshells and raw human waste routinely scraped from faulty or clogged pipes along the city’s sewer system. Other cities in the county ship this type of waste to the Orange County Sanitation District. But in Newport Beach, it was pumped out by vacuum trucks and ferried to the city’s maintenance yard, where it was watered down, dried, then mixed with beach debris and other garbage before being carted away to the Frank R. Bowerman Landfill in Irvine.

Under state health and safety codes, before such waste is disposed of it must be tested for metals and other pollutants. Violations can result in maximum fines of $25,000 a day, depending on the severity.

It was unclear Tuesday whether Newport Beach will face any fines.

The Orange County Waste Management Department, which oversees the landfill, was closed in observance of Lincoln’s Birthday on Tuesday, and officials could not be reached. Another regulatory agency, the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, was also closed for the holiday.

Kiff said he has spoken many times with water regulators about the issue, and they told him the dumping probably did not exceed the state’s threshold for toxic metals because Newport Beach has little heavy industry. The Bowerman landfill is lined to protect groundwater, and Kiff noted that the only business handling metals in the city is a plating warehouse.

Environmentalists believe the dumping was unintentional. However, they worry about the potential harm to workers who handled the material.

Jack Skinner, a doctor of internal medicine and an environmentalist in Newport Beach, said human waste can contain 100 types of viruses. Among the most harmful are hepatitis A and salmonella, he said.

Kiff said workers have access to masks, gloves and other equipment that they can use at their discretion. He said no worker has filed a complaint about illness.

The city, which stopped dumping the material four weeks ago, plans to bring in an outside investigator to determine exactly how long the dumping had been going on, Kiff said. An outside consultant will also be hired to educate staff about regulations.