By Gary Walker

A large-scale sewage spill that originated from a Culver City pumping station has resulted in one of the largest discharges in recent years.

Approximately 500,000 gallons of sewage from a line that links Culver City’s and Los Angeles’ sewer systems at the Mesmer Sewer Pump Station was released into Ballona Creek last Thursday, causing the closure of five nearby beaches. The following day lifeguards removed signs from a two-mile stretch along the coastline after bacteria levels in the ocean indicated that they had remained normal for two consecutive days.

Initially, officials with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health believed that the beaches would be closed through the weekend based on the size of the discharge.

Los Angeles Public Works responded to the accident and worked with Culver City crews to make a barricade in the channel to pool the sewage. Cleanup lasted approximately five hours, ending at 5:35 p.m.

The point of origin of the sewage discharge was
Centinela Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard, where a maintenance hole was found to be overflowing from the north outfall sewer where the Culver City force main discharges, according to Robert Potter of the manager of Los Angeles’ Wastewater Collection System Division. The blocked sewer line links Culver City’s and Los Angeles’ sewer systems.

“We were able to open the bypass valve that is in place and divert flow to the 36-inch forcemain line on Centinela. This reduced the spilling of sewage and we set up a bypass to handle the flow,” Potter’s field notes state.

Sandrine Cassidy Schmitt, a board member of the Ballona Creek Renaissance, was unaware that a major spill had occurred until she was informed by the News. “I actually smelled it, but I didn’t know what had happened,” Schmitt, a Culver City resident and business owner who lives near Ballona Creek, said.

While Culver City and Los Angeles are jointly investigating the cause of the accident, there are dissenting views on which jurisdiction is actually responsible for the spill.

“We set up a bypass in order to mitigate the spill and then Culver City will need to make necessary repairs. We have made all the necessary notifications and told them Culver City was responsible,” Potter’s report states.

Culver City Public Works Director Charles Herbertson said there is no reason that Culver City should be connected to the outfall sewer line that was blocked. “The manhole serves no purpose to us,” Herbertson asserted. “It is to protect Los Angeles customers from getting sewer gas into their lines. We feel that this is a Los Angeles spill.”

Potter said a Culver City crew stated they inspect the location daily and checked it earlier that day and found no problems, which Herbertson confirmed. “This was a redesigned configuration for the benefit of Culver City to discharge their pumping plant into their pumping plant into the north outfall line,” the report says.

An investigation is pending by the Regional Water Quality Board, and Culver City has received a notice of violation. “We will cooperate with Los Angeles and the board until the investigation is resolved,” Herbertson pledged.

Amanda Geisbach, a water quality scientist at Santa Monica-based Heal the Bay, said it is almost certain that the jurisdiction found to be responsible for the sewage spill will be fined. “Especially with a spill of this magnitude,” she added.

The reconfiguration joining Culver City and Los Angeles is now being replaced, Herbertson said. “This will eliminate the potential for this to happen again,” the public works director explained.

Geisbach is not sure if the cause of the spill is structural in nature. “It looks like it was more of a problem with maintenance,” she said.

According to Los Angeles Public Works, a contractor who repaired the forcemain on a previous occasion told Culver City that they needed to address the sluice gate that was in the maintenance hole. According to Potter, the contractor told Culver City officials that the bolts were not stainless steel and needed attention immediately.

Herbertson has met with his Los Angeles counterparts as well as Adel Hagekhalil, assistant director of the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, to gather more information on the discharge. “The subject of responsibility did not come up,” Herbertson said.

Schmitt said she hopes the sewage spill was a maintenance problem as opposed to structural concerns. “If this is a reoccurring problem, the origin of it needs to be addressed on a larger scale,” she said.

Herbertson said it was too early to tell but he believes that the city’s infrastructure was not the problem in this case. “Sometimes people put things down sewers that don’t belong there,” he said.

Geisbach thinks the public’s attention is more focused on accidents involving sewage or oil discharges following the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil spill off the coast of Louisiana, as well as other environmental disasters that followed the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Absolutely,” she said. “I think that the public’s awareness is definitely heightened after what happened in the Gulf this summer.”

Culver City has 30 days to submit its report to the Regional Water Quality Board.