No-Flush Device Is a No-Go at City Hall

The more delicately nurtured among you might wish to set aside your morning eggs and coffee for a few moments, for the subject of today’s column is urinals.

Not just any urinals. The appliances in question are manufactured by a Los Angeles company called Falcon Waterfree Technologies, along with a handful of competitors. As the name suggests, Falcon’s technical innovation is a urinal that requires no water to flush -- requires no flush at all, in fact.

Although the Falcon fixture resembles the conventional porcelain variety in its basic form, its crucial difference lies in a plastic cartridge that fits over the drain. The cartridge houses an oil-like liquid that floats atop the urine to seal its odor and any other unsavory characteristics from the atmosphere before it flows, undiluted, to the sewer.

Falcon estimates that its technology can save more than 40,000 gallons a year per urinal, without subjecting users to objectionable odors or health risks. The company has collected testimonials from numerous customers, including the Rose Bowl, which installed 259 of the fixtures in its concourse and press box last year, and from fans such as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which naturally appreciates any technology that can conserve water on such a scale.

“Naively or not, we thought this would take off,” says Marc Nathanson, a former cable TV entrepreneur whose firm, Mapleton Investments, is Falcon’s principal financial backer. “Why would you be against it?”

That was his reasoning, anyway, before Falcon entered the rococo world of Los Angeles City Hall. As it turned out, installing waterless urinals within the city limits requires changing the plumbing code, which is based on the state building code, which is based on various model codes that prohibit the installation of any sanitary fixtures not connected to a water supply.

When City Council members Eric Garcetti and Ruth Galanter filed a motion to lift the prohibition, they ran into opposition from the Department of Building and Safety and, arguably, an even mightier foe: the plumbing and pipe-fitters unions.

Nathanson believes the unions fear that waterless urinals will cost them jobs. That’s because the part of a conventional urinal that breaks or is vandalized most often is the flush valve, which often requires a plumber to repair but doesn’t exist in a waterless fixture.

He also thinks the concern is shortsighted. After all, if waterless urinals were to become all the rage, the retrofitting demand in Los Angeles alone could keep plumbers and pipe-fitters in business for years.

His political allies say that, on a fundamental level, the opposition reflects the resistance to change of entrenched bureaucracies, even when an essential need such as water conservation is at stake. Galanter, whose tenure on the council soon will be ended by term-limit rules, likens the atmosphere to what she faced when she began an ultimately successful campaign for low-flow toilets in 1989.

“Everybody was very upset. Building and Safety said it wouldn’t work. But it turns out they could all deal with it.”

The unions deny that they see the latest proposal as a jobs issue. In fact, they’ve mustered every conceivable argument against changing the plumbing code except the implications for job security.

At a City Hall hearing held in early April by Councilman Nate Holden’s Environmental Quality Committee, one opponent raised the specter of a public health disaster caused by un-flushed urine and even alluded to SARS, the viral disease that has spread across Asia. (Severe acute respiratory syndrome may already be emerging as an all-purpose public health goblin, just as 9/11 has become the go-to excuse for any company trying to explain why it lost money in the last year and a half.)

Another opponent accused Falcon of harboring the deplorable motive of wanting to turn a profit, although he didn’t say whether he knew of any charitable organizations that happen to manufacture “green” urinals as a sideline.

But the charge most frequently laid against Falcon is that by bringing the issue before the City Council, it’s trying to short-circuit a well-established bureaucratic process. Officials in Sacramento have the authority to establish statewide building codes, city attorneys say, and municipalities are permitted to enact amendments only if they are as restrictive as or more restrictive than the original.

The proposal by Galanter and Garcetti, which last week was referred back to committee for several more weeks, wouldn’t meet that test. According to the model code issued by the International Assn. of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials -- the foundation for the California code -- innovative fixtures such as Falcon’s face a sort of Catch-22. The code explicitly requires that all sanitary fixtures flush with water. Plumbers saying that waterless urinals might conform to code if only they flushed with water is a bit like cows saying they might find margarine an acceptable spread if only it were made from butter.

Defenders of the system say that the barrier to change is high for a very good reason.

“The concern is that if a manufacturer has figured out how to politically go around the rules, then there are no rules,” I was told by Julie Butcher, general manager of Local 347 of the Service Employees International Union, whose 9,000 L.A. members include the city plumbing inspectors.

She added: “When I see the Department of Building and Safety on one side and on the other is every $800-suited lobbyist in the city, something’s going on. The building code is changed all the time. It’s not impossible.”

Either Falcon is impatient “or there are enough questions about it that they’re trying an end run,” she concluded.

That suspicion is shared by the Department of Building and Safety, which says it’s entirely open to being convinced of the virtues of waterless urinals. But agency officials say the testing regime they have in mind could take a year or more to complete. They contend that Falcon hasn’t been forthcoming enough with the technical data the department needs to judge whether the product is as odor-free and environmentally benign as the company maintains.

“We’re always extremely supportive of new methods and products, especially when they have secondary benefits” such as water conservation, says David Keim, the agency’s chief of code enforcement. “We don’t have anything against this product.”

For its part, Falcon asserts that the safety and efficacy of its product have been established repeatedly. It cites a study by the UCLA civil engineering department, which installed one of the company’s waterless urinals at its own Boelter Hall and found no problems with odor or cleanliness. The city Department of Water and Power told Councilman Holden that it has had nine Falcon urinals installed in its building for almost a year, has received few complaints and is hankering to support retrofitting throughout its jurisdiction by offering customer rebates. “I can assure you there will be water savings, given they’re replacing a flush of 1.5 gallons of water” per use, said a DWP official.

Still, there’s little doubt that one thing that makes the pipe trades nervous about waterless urinals is the extreme novelty of the concept.

“We look at this as turning back the clock on 100 years of history of public safety and health,” says Mike Massey, executive director of the Piping Industry Progress and Educational Trust Fund, who believes that the city should try other solutions first, such as allowing bathroom fixtures to be flushed with recycled “gray” water. “We don’t think the consumer should be exposed to an insanitary condition because of panic over water conservation.”

In the face of such resistance, supporters of the new technology, including Galanter, are trying to take the long view. Though building codes should be conservative by their very nature, they say, that doesn’t mean they should be exempt from being amended to meet local or exigent circumstances, such as the looming water crisis.

“The opponents are clutching at straws,” she says. “Our job at the council is to make policy. My response to all this is: Get with the program, guys.”

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Golden State appears every Monday and Thursday. Michael Hiltzik can be reached at golden.state@latimes.com.