The trash and other debris that overwhelmed the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant earlier this month, leading to a sewage spill, created a life-threatening situation at the facility that required evacuations and a no-win choice between sending 17 million gallons of raw sewage into the Pacific Ocean or potentially having the entire plant flood.
That’s according to a new report on how debris backed up at Hyperion, near El Segundo, leading to a sewage spill that closed South Bay beaches for several days in mid-July. And while Hyperion staff worked to contain the flood, the report said, poor communication among shift supervisors, executive managers and county health inspectors delayed public disclosure of the spill.
The report, which the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors discussed on Tuesday, July 27, concluded that the way officials handled the sewage release and necessary public notifications was a failure. And while the plant staff successfully saved the plant with limited ocean damage, the report also gave an ominous warning:
“Next time,” the report said, those efforts “may not be enough.”
The latest analysis of the spill — which involved interviews with officials at six separate agencies — offers the fullest explanation and timeline for what occurred on the afternoon of July 11 and into the early morning hours of July 12 at the facility, which treats roughly 260 million gallons of sewage daily that comes from 2,600 miles of piping across Loa Angeles County. The report also further underscores the severity of what LA Sanitation & Environment, the Los Angeles city agency that operates the plant, previously described as a “nearly catastrophic” failure. The report, prepared by consultant Citygate Associates LLC, at various times describes the incident as “unprecedented,” a “near miss” and a “once in a career event.”
That incident has also created multiple layers of fallout, with repairs to flood-damaged plant expected to take weeks, the resulting odor forcing LA to offer El Segundo residents reimbursements for air conditioning or hotel rooms, and with residents and elected officials expressing outrage at both the spill and the delay in notifying the public.
LA Sanitation & Environment, in a Tuesday afternoon statement, defended its communication to other agencies, but also said it is working to improve the public notification..
“We are already working with the various County departments,” the statement said, “to address the findings of the report and improve public notifications.
Timeline
The spill that resulted in four days of beach closures occurred from about 8 p.m. July 11 to 4 a.m. July 12.
But the incident that preceded the spill began about six hours earlier, on what the report described as “an otherwise normal summer day” for the plant. Around 2 p.m. July 11, large trash pieces began inundating the plant.
Where those pieces came from remain unknown.
“LASAN has been conducting an internal investigation into the cause and source,” LA Sanitation & Environment said in its Tuesday statement, “in keeping with our mission to constantly improve and serve as effective environmental stewards.”
Those pieces overwhelmed the screens and mechanical rakes the plant uses to filter debris before treatable material makes its way into the plant. The trash kept coming and clearing the debris at the headwaters building — where that initial filtering occurs — became increasingly difficult, the report said.
“By late afternoon the debris flow had completely overwhelmed the headwaters building,” the report said, “requiring evacuation of personnel due to increasingly life-threatening circumstances.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were evacuated or why the situation was life threatening, but the problem spilled beyond the headwaters facility.
“The headwaters building massively flooded,” the report said, “and then spilled into the plant street system.”
Plant staff, however, was prepared, the report said. They installed filter screens on all storm drain inlets throughout Hyperion, the report said, to remove as much solid debris as possible.
It wasn’t enough.
By early afternoon, the report said, 50% of the plant had flooded — and a secondary pump system couldn’t keep up.
“The Plant team was between two outcomes,” the report said,” and neither was environmentally desirable.”
The first possibility was the sewage would flood onto the nearest public streets and the plant’s surface runoff would surge past the facility’s perimeter and onto the beach.
The second option was to discharge whatever untreated sewage the plant couldn’t handle into the emergency one-mile outfall. The plant took that option — and 17 million gallons ended up in the ocean.
Health crisis
As the sewage was flowing into the ocean, a scramble was also underway to inform the necessary agencies — but it would take nearly a full day before full notifications to the public happened.
That delay upset local residents and critics as much as the spill itself.
The L.A. County Department of Public Health’s Environmental Health Program was contacted by 8:11 p.m., just one minute after plant managers reported the spill to the state office of emergency services. By 8:24 p.m., a “strike team” of two inspectors from the EH Program was dispatched.
By 9:48 p.m. Sunday, it was clear a major incident was underway, according to the report. But that wasn’t communicated clearly, according to the report.
“At this point, as plant executive managers were in the midst of saving the plant,” the report said, “some of the information from plant shift supervisors was inconsistent in details, but to anyone familiar with the plant, an extraordinary event was underway.”
In the critical hours following the spill, communication was spotty and may not have fully conveyed the gravity of the situation at a time when a coordinated response was most needed, according to the report.
Understanding the scope of the crisis was hindered several obstacles, including unanswered phone calls, a generic email about the incident going up the Public Health Department’s chain of command, officials in roles for which they were not trained, and a lack of backup systems to ensure information gets communicated correctly, the report said.
“As EH Program upper management started their work week with normal meetings and dozens of emails, there was only partial notice of the plant incident,” the report said. “Not until late morning as more agencies contacted the EH Program, did executive management understand what occurred, at what magnitude.”
LA Sanitation & Environment also seemed to place the burden on the EH Program.
“A County Department of Public Health inspector was on-site (not indoors) almost immediately,” its statement said, “and saw for herself the severity of the exterior overflow situation while the discharge was occurring.
Aftermath and recommendations
The report, in its conclusion, called the incident a “near miss” as it occurred during a dry season debris flow, as opposed to the more troublesome rainy season. It should be viewed as a warning, the report stated, as it put the public in as much risk as a loss of electric power or drinking water. The report advised redoubling education efforts to keep debris out of the sanitation system.
It advised four main recommendations in terms of the response:
- The notification process needs a tiered alert system to denote severity and must include active communication as opposed to the mere issuance of an email;
- The standard operating procedures need to be updated to not rely on one person or technology notification system;
- The agencies need to come together in the next four weeks to quickly establish an inter-agency operating procedure for major plant emergencies;
- County departments need to fully implement the incident command system.
In the weeks following the spill, repairs at the facility have resulted in especially foul smells emanating into nearby neighborhoods. El Segundo City Hall has been getting flooded with calls from confused residents after Los Angeles expanded what local residents are eligible for compensation.
Martha Guzman-Hurtado, communications and legislative affairs manager, said she has fielded about 50 calls and about two dozen emails from residents unclear about the city of LA’s process. The LA Sanitation & Environment released more information on the reimbursement program on Tuesday, including extending it to Aug 5.
Guzman-Hurtado said the smell depends on location and wind direction.
“There are days when I don’t smell it at all. But last night was the first time I had a hard time sleeping because the odor was pungent,” Guzman-Hurtado said. “There’s times when it’s pretty unbearable. It’s concerning.”