Runoff Worsens Bay Water

By Harry Saltzgaver
Executive Editor

Water quality in Alamitos Bay is going backwards in terms of quality after low-flow storm drain water has begun being dumped back into the bay.

Now city and county officials are negotiating to make the temporary fix this summer, diversion of the polluted water to the county water treatment plant, permanent. The three-way agreement among Long Beach, Los Angeles County and the Los Angeles County Sanitation District technically ended Sept. 30.

“I’ve already had a meeting with (Fourth District County) Supervisor (Don) Knabe,” said Third District City Councilman Gary DeLong. “He’s been very supportive. We followed that up with a proposal we think makes sense.”

Early this summer, a resident noticed that water was being discharged into Alamitos Bay from the storm drain pump station near Leeway Sailing Center. She contacted city officials, asking whether that discharge might be part of the cause for continued bad water quality results in the bay.

Kevin Wattier, Water Department general manager, contacted the county and, with the help of Knabe and DeLong, convinced the sanitation district to allow the water to be sent to the nearby water treatment plant. Low-flow storm drain runoff typically is very polluted because it is more concentrated — there is more oil, fertilizer and other urban pollution in less water.

After that agreement was reached, it was discovered that two more large pump stations were discharging into the bay. Those pumps did not have the same automatic diversion equipment found in the first station, so Water Department workers rigged manual diversions into the sewer system.

The result, DeLong said, has been a significant increase in water quality at beaches all along the bay. Where the Heal The Bay group gave those beaches “D” and “F” grades in 2006, they found “A” and “B” grades this summer.

But the summer agreement ended on Sept. 30, and operations returned to normal, with the storm drain overflow going back into the bay. Water quality tests this week showed unacceptable levels of pollution at several stations in the bay.

The Alamitos pump station near Leeway has a control for the diversion that can be monitored and operated remotely by the County Public Works Department. The Belmont and Appian Way stations would have to be manually operated by Long Beach Water Department employees.

DeLong and the city are asking that the low flow from all the stations continue to be sent to the sewer treatment plant. In order to avoid overloading the plant, the diversions would stop if there were any significant rainfall (anything more than 0.1 inches a day) and would continue to be turned off for three days following any rain.

The county’s Public Works Department has not responded to the request. David Sommers, Knabe’s press secretary, said that talks would continue, but that he couldn’t be more specific.

“The county will continue to work with the city of Long Beach towards a permanent solution for the water quality issues in Alamitos Bay,” Sommers said in an e-mail. “We (Public Works and our office) have received letters from Mayor Foster and Councilman Gary DeLong requesting resumption of the discharge of storm drain flows from the pump stations around Alamitos Bay to the sanitary sewer system. The Department of Public Works has not formally responded to this letter yet. However, we will include this request in our continued discussions with the city of Long Beach to develop long-term solutions for water quality in Alamitos Bay.”

DeLong and others said it would not be unusual for the negotiations to take some time, particularly because there are three governmental entities involved. While the county’s Public Works Department is responsible for the pump stations, the sewer treatment plant is run by the Los Angeles County Sanitation District, and governed by a separate board and administration. The city is responsible for water quality and testing.