Officials Warn Power Outages Could Cause Major Sewage
Spills
Regional water authorities say cutoff at pumping
stations and in
underground pipes could loose millions of gallons.
Los Angeles Times - 6/22/01
By Seema Mehta, staff writer
Regional water officials are warning sewer
agencies throughout
Southern California and elsewhere to prepare for
rolling blackouts
this summer, fearing that small cities that lack
adequate backup
power supplies could experience major sewage spills.
While some agencies are making special
preparations--buying
emergency generators and testing critical power
systems--others
insist their existing facilities can withstand the
outages and pose
no threat to public health and the region's waterways.
Critics are weary, however, saying the labyrinth
of pump
stations and underground pipes that move billions of
gallons of
sewage a day in Southern California is, in general,
not well
maintained and susceptible to mechanical failure.
"They're not prepared for the unexpected," said
Wayne Baglin of
the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board,
which enforces
federal and state water laws in San Diego County and
south Orange
County. "Mechanical and electrical systems often come
with surprises."
There have been no reported spills in the
smattering of rolling
blackouts earlier this year, according to regional
water officials.
However, a massive blackout in 1996 caused a
failure at the
Hyperion treatment plant near Los Angeles
International Airport,
causing 6 million gallons of partially treated sewage
to flow into
Santa Monica Bay. A 10-mile stretch of beach was
closed.
The same outages caused a pump station failure in
south Orange
County, causing a spill that sent up to 100,000
gallons of sewage
into the Pacific Ocean off Doheny State Beach.
One planned outage even caused a major spill. As
part of a Y2K
readiness test in 1999, the Los Angeles Sanitation
Bureau shut off
power to a Van Nuys treatment plant--causing 3 million
gallons of
sewage to spill into a nearby park.
The state's power grid operators have predicted
that if
California uses the same amount of electricity this
summer as it did
last summer, residents face 34 days of rotating
blackouts.
While critical operations such as hospitals and
police agencies
are exempt from power outages, sewer systems are not.
Though their
work does not involve life-and-death consequences, a
failing sewer
system can have severe impacts, such as fouling
beaches with raw
waste or causing sewage to back up into homes.
While treatment plants run on electricity, the
large ones in
Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties can produce
enough
internal power to be self-sufficient in times of
crises, using
methane and other biogases created during the
treatment process. Some
agencies also can burn trash or use waste water to
create
hydroelectric power.
However, the problem may be in getting the sewage
to the plants.
Most sewer agencies take advantage of gravity to move
sewage from
homes and businesses to centralized treatment
facilities. But in
hilly areas, especially in coastal Orange County,
cities rely on lift
or pump stations to move the waste to higher ground.
Each of these
units is connected to the electrical grid, and subject
to rolling
blackouts.
In Southern California, executive officers from
regional water
boards covering Orange, Los Angeles, San Diego,
Riverside, San
Bernardino, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties have
either sent out,
or plan to send out by month's end, letters warning
local agencies to
prepare for rolling blackouts this summer.
"Sewage lift stations not equipped with
functional emergency
backup supplies, such as generators, may be extremely
vulnerable to
rolling blackouts," wrote Gerard Thibeault, executive
officer of the
Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, in a
June 15 letter
to local sewer agencies.
Roger Briggs, executive officer of the Central
Coast Regional
Water Quality Control Board, was more pointed in a
June 11 letter to
sewer agencies in parts of Santa Barbara, San Luis
Obispo, Monterey
and other central coastal counties.
"An interruption of power that causes a [spill]
will not likely
shield a discharger from mandatory penalties," such as
fines, he
wrote.
Officials say the duration and geographic range
of the blackouts
will shape what happens this summer. Some agencies
have begun
preparing for the worst.
Huntington Beach, which has 27 lift stations, is
now equipped to
deal with a citywide blackout that would last several
hours. The city
council voted Monday to spend $175,000 to buy six
backup
diesel-powered generators to add to the existing five
generators.
"Plan for the worst and hope for the best," said
city spokesman
Rich Barnard.
The city of Santa Barbara recently installed a
large backup
generator at its sewage treatment plant in
anticipation of rolling
blackouts.
Despite these measures, environmental activists
remain skeptical.
Last year, there were 377 sewer spills in Orange
County, 40 of
which contaminated the county's coast and forced beach
closures. This
year, 25 beach closures were caused by sewer spills.
"We've already got a system breaking down and
falling apart now.
Rolling blackouts are going to do nothing but make it
more
complicated," said Roger von Butow, chairman of the
Clean Water Now!
Coalition in Laguna Beach. "I can not conceive of
having rolling
blackouts for any substantial amount of time without
having sewer
spills."
But other agencies, including Los Angeles and
Orange counties,
and the cities of San Diego, Newport Beach and Laguna
Beach, say they
are already well prepared.
Don Avila, spokesman for the Sanitation Districts
of Los Angeles
County, said its treatment facilities generate 117
megawatts of
power, making it about the 20th-largest power
generator in the state.
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