Expo Neighbors Environmental Group

MASSIVE SEWER PROJECT UNDERWAY

Aug 24, 2001

CITY APPROVES MASSIVE SEWER PROJECT
On Exposition Blvd (NOS-ECIS)
Billion Dollar Cesspool? Hydraulic Relief?
Environmental Racism or Disaster?

On November 10, 1998, the Los Angeles City Council approved a massive public works project to up-grade the sewer system. In order to intelligently evaluate the city's proposal, as well as alternative proposals, it is imperative that you clearly understand that the decision they made will affect East Los Angeles, South Los Angeles, Crenshaw, Baldwin Hills, and the Blair Hills communities for the next 100 years.

The Metropolitan Sewer System serves the City of Los Angeles and an additional 500,000 residents in the cities of: San Fernando, Burbank, Glendale, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Culver City, Santa Monica, Marina Del Rey, and El Segundo; by a contractual arrangement. The North Outfall Sewer (NOS) is the main trunk line of the sewer system. It starts in the west San Fernando Valley, and runs in an easterly direction, generally, paralleling the Los Angeles River, the Ventura Freeway and the Santa Monica Mountains through Burbank and Glendale. The NOS turns in a southerly direction and follows the Los Angeles River to about 4th Street. At this location, it turns in a westerly direction and runs through east Los Angeles, south Los Angeles, the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area on through Culver City, in the vicinity of Jefferson Blvd. From this location, it runs in a Southwesterly Direction to the Hyperion Treatment Plant (HTP) at Imperial Highway and Vista Del Mar Blvd.; near the ocean.

The new NOS-ECIS sewer will will be constructed on Jefferson Blvd., (west of La Cienega) in Culver City, and cross over to Exposition Boulevard at La Brea. Then it will run down Exposition East past USC to the Los Angeles River at 4th Street. In Culver City, the NOS/ECIS line would connect to the north outfall replacement sewer (NORS). The NORS was completed in the early part of the '90s, at a cost of nearly one billion dollars supposedly to provide hydraulic relief for HTP.
How Sewers Function
In the San Fernando Valley, there are three Water Reclamation Plants (WRP). The WRP's reclaim about 85% of the water in the sewage that they process, which is purified and re-used for irrigation of parks, golf courses, etc. The remaining 15% contain the sludge (solid waste matter) that is dumped back into the sewer, along with the normal sewage matter and flows downstream for treatment at Hyperion Treatment Plant (HTP) in Playa Del Rey. This is the only facility for complete treatment of solid waste matter in our sewer system.

The HTP processes sewage and has a "limited capacity" to handle excess sewage flows. So occasionally, during extremely heavy rains or "high peak sewage flows," the City of Los Angeles HTP deliberately releases partially treated sewage into the Santa Monica Bay or Ballona Creek because of their inability to treat excess flow. That's why the dangerous bacterial levels are present in the Santa Monica Bay during and after heavy rains. In order to avoid sewage overflow, hydraulic relief must be provided from water reclamation plant(s) that will reduce or control the sewage flow to HTP.

COMPOSITION OF SEWAGE
Sewage is the liquid waste of the community and includes that from industrial, commercial and residential sources. These are called industrial and domestic sewage respectively. Domestic sewage, which is the majority of the sewage in this area, contains less than 0.1 percent of solid materials, or in other words, it contains more than 99.9 percent water. The solid material is about half organic and half inorganic; though the quality of solid is not large, the organic content decomposes readily with the production of unpleasant and unhealthy fumes, which makes the collection and expeditious removal or treatment of the sewage from built-up areas imperative. To put the ratio of solid matter in the sewage in perspective, less than 0.1 percent means that there is less than one (1) gallon of solid matter in 1,000 gallons of sewage.

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS PROPOSED BY COMMUNITIES
One doesn't need to be an engineer or rocket scientist to know that it doesn't take 1,000 gallons of water to transfer less than one (1) gallon of solid waste matter. Therefore, the true solution for upgrading the sewer system and to provide hydraulic relief for HTP is very simple. Reduce the quantity of the sewage flow to HTP by constructing a water reclamation plant(s) at strategic locations with a capacity of 100 million gallons a day, or more. No additional sewer lines would be needed west of Arlington Avenue in South Los Angeles to convey sewage. For the extremely remote possibility, that the WRPs would not provide enough hydraulic relief for HTP, an off-line storage should be constructed on the vacant city-owned land (approximately 600 acres) located on the northeast corner of the intersection of Vista del Mar and Imperial Highway. This location is just across the street from HTP, which would permit the biogases from the off-line storage to be readily conveyed to the HTP, without the toxic gases escaping into the environment of the surrounding communities.



CITY OF LOS ANGELES IGNORES COMMUNITY INPUT
Despite intense opposition from a coalition of block clubs and homeowner associations, the city, lead by 8th district Councilman Mark-Ridley-Thomas orchestrated a political strategy which manipulated the public and rubber-stamped and moved fast-forward to approve the massive sewer line called NOS/ECIS (North Outfall Sewer/East Central Interceptor Sewer). The City claims the new NOS-ECIS is needed to repair the aging sewer but failed to admit that 2 major sewers will exist, one block from each other. This creates the capacity to store sewage in our community for later delivery to the treatment plant on a controlled basis. The City Engineers and Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas firmly stated that, "there is no viable alternative" to building NOS-ECIS. But on the other hand, did not seriously consider the proposal to build a relief sewer to Arlington, and a 100-million gallon per day water reclamation plant which would provide true hydraulic relief. The City's hidden agenda is to build NOS-ECIS and use both, the NOS and NOS/ECIS for in-line sewage storage as needed.

"The City's failure to seriously study all proposed alternatives constitutes a Violation of Due Process," said Patrick McCullough, President of the Exposition Neighbors Association. He went on to say, "The City of Los Angeles refused to provide the public with accurate flow data and other information which forced the public to do its own extensive research". Facts contained in the original Environmental Impact Report were deliberately omitted and approved by City Council. Alternative solutions were ignored by the City Engineers, the Department of Public Works and some council-members who pre-approved the project without the consent or knowledge of the public at large. The purpose of the Environmental Impact Report is to evaluate proposed action and alternatives to the proposed action and identifies significant environmental impacts. If Council-members don't read the EIR, how can they know what's best for the public? Of all councilmembers, Councilman Nate Holden presented the only strong opposition to the to NOS-ECIS. Mark Ridley-Thomas and Rita Waters seemed to control and "rubber-stamp" the process to approve the project and limited the final public comment period to 10 minutes, "to put the final nail in the coffin". Mark Ridley-Thomas also instructed a city police officer to restrain the vocal opposition by Ms. Opal Young and Ms. Connie Brown..

The Department of Public Works, Parsons Brinkerhoff, Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas and the Figueroa Media Group bombarded the public with a large-scale public relations campaign, which manipulated several senior citizens to show up at the Board of Public hearing with buttons on saying I support ECIS and they could'nt even explain what ECIS meant. A misleading video tape was shown at a community meeting and the mailed 150,000 slick mailers to the communities to sale them on NOS-ECIS and not to honestly and accurately inform them.






UNAVOIDABLE ADVERSE AFFECTS
The construction area of the NOS-ECIS is approximately 11 miles long and will result in disproportionately high and adverse impacts on minority populations. It will extremely impact neighbors and businesses within 200 feet from the construction area and will create serious unavoidable adverse effects. The Board of Public Works approved a tunneling method similar to MTA's system in which tunnel boring machines create constant annoying vibrations and noise in conjunction with a locomotive operating on a temporary rail underground. The consistent 24-hour noise and vibrations will be devastating and will last approximately 2-3 years. It is well known that ground-borne vibrations and noise from the underground locomotive trains were a significant source of community complaints during construction of the NORS sewer project. The ground caved-in and extensive damage was done to 2 homes in Blair Hills, just west of La Cienega. Homeowners presented claims and the City of Los Angeles refused to compensate the homeowners for damage. The occurrence of subsurface gases in the tunnel would also create hazardous conditions and could cause explosions. Because of "the good old boys" network,Kenny and Kewit, the same contractors who were fired and investigated for criminal charges on the MTA/Hollywood tunneling fiasco are working on the ECIS project in our communities.

The health and safety of the residents, particularly the young and the elderly will be greatly affected. During construction, contaminated ground water and soil will surface from the large shaft sites located at Arlington and Exposition and La Cienega and Jefferson Blvd. Truck loads of soil will be removed and transported through our communities. High-risk consequences such as respiratory ailments, cancer, heart disease, etc. could induced.

After construction, residents along the alignment will be exposed to Hydrogen Sulfide sewer gases known to cause a high incident of asthma and other pulmonary diseases. Sewage travelling through our neighborhood comes all the way from the West San Fernando Valley and by the time it reaches the Crenshaw District, it's ripe. The smell is unhealthful gases that the City calls odors. Studies have shown that minority youth are hospitalized for asthma four times the normal rate of the general population. The reletivaly new NORS sewer is a prime example of why new pipes don't solve odors. Hydrogen Sulfide gasses still are released from this new sewer in the vicinity of West Los Angeles College. The City claims NOS-ECIS will add needed sewer capacity but what it really does is create job security for a few and create enormous health risks for many. It also will facilitate more pollution to the Santa Monica Bay.

WATER RECLAMATION PLANTS
Instead of creating a massive maze of cesspools in the inner city of Los Angeles, Water Reclamation Plants can transform sewage into clear quality water suitable for a multitude of benefits. They provide hydraulic relief by removing 99.9 percent of the wastewater and treating it to level safe to the human touch. The City of Los Angeles' Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant treats over 80 million gallons of sewage per day and provides a valuable commodity called reclaimed water. Reclaimed water is fully treated to a three- stage process that meets State standards. The Tillman Plant supplies reclaimed water to Balboa lake, a 27-acre recreational lake which permits boating and fishing. It also supplies water to its own "Award Winning 6-?½ acre Japanese Garden operated by the Bureau of Sanitation-under the direction of the Board of Public Works.

Long Beach has a Water Reclamation Plant that treats sewage and provides reclaimed water for irrigation of 285 acres of El Dorado Park and 150 acres of El Dorado Golf Course and 785 additional acres of land which includes schools, freeways, cemeteries, greenbelts and other landscaped areas.

There have been several recent newspaper articles related to our water supply. Our water supply is the most precious resource in which we are misusing on a daily basis. The City of Los Angeles doesn't even have an emergency water supply in the event of a major earthquake, which is another reason Water Reclamation Plants are crucial and long overdue.

The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Coalition of Homeowner Associations and Block Clubs has proposed the construction of a water reclamation plant to treat and dispose of San Fernando Valley sewage before it enters South Los Angeles, Crenshaw, or the Baldwin Hills areas.The EIR was a sham and didn't adequately explore proposed alternatives. Unfortunately, councilmembers voted without the publics best interest in mind.



The Public Speaks Out



NOS-ECIS is one of the greatest environmental disasters ever forced on a vast number of communities. The deteriorating health of the inner cities and the people that live there are a result of racist land-use planning, a process that honored profits over health, that ignored the need in poor neighborhoods for litter abatement, trees, healthy parks, for well designed transit corridors or clean air. Minority communities are always the beneficiaries of sewers, toxic waste sites, recycling centers, removal of trees, etc.
Our communities will no longer be exploited as a repository for waste, human or human generated. The ECIS project only readies us for more sewer transport rivers and future storage capacity. This 500 million dollar sewer only benefits Parsons Brinkerhoff, tunneling contractors, the city engineering department, and the greedy politicians pushing the project. The logical solution for long range sewer relief and other water problems is water reclamation. Man only puts himself closer to being the endangered species by making environmentally destructive decisions like the NOS-ECIS project.
A few jobs were promised to residents within a five mile radius but reality is, only 40 jobs developed and if you had the correct zip code stamped on your forehead, you could line up at the Urban League and possibly get one of these jobs.



LEGAL ACTION

A team of attorneys sent a Demand Letter to the City of Los Angeles on our behalf. The Demand Letter in general states:

The City of Los Angeles must stop its discriminatory actions against the communities of color and low-income residents of Southcentral, Leimert Park, Baldwin Hills and Crenshaw communities.

The City must direct sewage flow away from the dilapidated and overburdened sewer which flow through our communities.

The City's Draft EIR of ECIS should be revised to reflect full consideration of proposed alternatives, including construction of a Water Reclamation Plant and allow the full participation of our communities in the decision making process.

The City has an obligation under both the Clean Water Act and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and its regulations to stop discriminatory spills and odors in our communities.

Therefore, the management of the sewer system raises serious concerns about intentional discrimination against our community.

As a result of the Demand Letter, several homeowners associations have intervened in the lawsuit of the Santa Monica Bay Keepers vs. the City of Los Angeles. As it stands, it is business as usual and the saga continues. Sell-outs, Profit oriented decision making, Non Inclusion in the planning process and YOU the real stakeholders are disrespected daily. Only you can stop the siege on our community.

ENVIRONMENTAL WATCH 2001