Concerns, finger-pointing greet audit of sewage spills

Southern Californians love their beaches.

So to keep the beaches and ocean unfouled, government agencies have over the last decade passed strict pollution laws and spent millions of dollars trying to reduce sewage spills and urban runoff.

But a county audit released this week determined that all of the regulations and disclosure requirements have created a communications breakdown that has left Los Angeles County health officials in the dark about numerous sewage spills.

The audit found that the county had records for just 19 of the 208 major sewage spills since 2002, which dumped nearly 10 million gallons of untreated waste onto streets and into creeks and other tributaries that lead to the sea.

How much of this raw sewage reached the ocean is unknown, but experts said the sheer volume makes it highly likely that some did.

But either because cities and water agencies didn't notify the county health department about their spills or the department didn't follow up on notifications it did receive, beaches were not tested or closed, leaving beachgoers possibly exposed to effluent.

The findings alarmed county leaders and environmental groups, who called Thursday for immediate creation of a clearinghouse for information about sewage leaks that could flow into the ocean, causing dangerous increases in bacteria levels.

"There was a total communication breakdown," said Anjali Jaiswal, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that has been active in Santa Monica Bay pollution issues. "There would be spills and they wouldn't be reported properly. The public wasn't notified."

Part of the problem is that various ocean pollution laws require different types of notification.

State law requires county health officials to act when a raw sewage spill reaches the ocean adjacent to a public beach, but gives local health departments leeway in determining whether a spill is big enough to reach the beach. One law requires agencies to inform the state Office of Emergency Services, while another requires them to contact county public health agencies.

Meanwhile, local water agencies and the county health department were pointing fingers about where the communications breakdown took place and whether it affected water quality.

County officials say they typically log all communications with their offices, and that there are no indications that the cities and water agencies that spilled most of the sewage phoned to report it.