Two Years After Catastrophic Sewage Spill, Still Working to Ensure Accountability

Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant near El Segundo. Photo by Brittany Murray.

Two years have passed since a catastrophic system failure at the Hyperion Water Treatment Plant led to a massive spill of 12.5 million gallons of raw sewage into the plant’s one-mile outfall pipe. This disaster on July 11, 2021, was our region’s most devastating sewage spill in decades. In its aftermath, LA Sanitation & Environment (LASAN) is working with the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (LA Regional Board) on a plan to address its numerous violations related to the spill. Depending on the outcome of negotiations between these agencies, robust penalties for this spill could create an opportunity for local community investments focused on ecological restoration, as well as investments that would modernize our wastewater system to protect our region from similar spills in the future.  

Equipment failure at Hyperion caused the catastrophic flooding of this facility in July 2021. The flooding led to a slow-motion disaster that lasted for weeks, with partially treated sewage continuing to spill from Hyperion’s outfall pipe directly into the ocean for several weeks while the plant was repaired and not yet able to return to normal operations.  

LASAN officials, Barbara Romero, Chief Operating Officer Traci Minamide, and plant manager Timeyin Dafeta, spoke during the tour of the Hyperion Plant on Wednesday, August 4, 2021. Photo by Brittany Murray.

Though initial reports theorized that the system failure was a result of a large influx of debris that overloaded the system, an audit conducted by the City (and reviewed by the Hyperion Ad Hoc Committee) concluded that, instead, the devastating spill was the result of a perfect storm of operational and equipment failures. When debris screeners stopped functioning properly and caused internal flooding, pervasive flooding within the plant occurred. LASAN staff ultimately worked diligently to prevent the disaster from being even more catastrophic. But it was understaffing and missed warning signs that contributed significantly to the spill in the first place. It was this flooding that caused the plant to have reduced treatment capability for many weeks, and led to extended discharge of partially treated sewage into the bay. 

The LA Regional Board Issues a Proposed Fine  

On April 3, 2023, over a year and a half after the massive Hyperion spill, the LA Regional Board proposed a $21.7 million penalty for the unauthorized discharge of sewage and deficient monitoring at the Hyperion Facility. This fine applied a penalty of $1.25 per gallon for the spill and added additional penalties for violations related to sampling, monitoring and reporting, odors, and subsequent effluent limit exceedances. This fine stands as the largest penalty the LA Regional Board has ever proposed in an administrative complaint for a violation of a waste discharge permit. However, LASAN is working to negotiate a settlement of the administrative complaint with the Regional Board. These types of negotiations are typical after a major failure to ensure that the penalties applied are appropriate and will ultimately lead to improved operations and appropriate mitigation. 

Although the details of the penalty are yet to be finalized, it’s helpful to see the LA Regional Board issue a significant proposed fine given the scale of this disaster, even though last year we called for penalties almost twice as large. Holding Hyperion accountable for the sewage spill through large penalties is essential to ensuring future spills like this don’t happen again. 

Headwork debris. Photo by Brittany Murray.

While heartened by the Regional Board’s action, it is important to note that it is not just the size of the fine that is important, but what the fine actually goes towards and what other requirements are included in the final resolution. In general, these types of penalties are broken into three components: (1) fines that go to the State Water Board’s Cleanup and Abatement Account to serve as a penalty sufficient to deter future spills; (2) Enhanced Compliance Actions where penalty monies can be waived with investments to improve the overall system beyond what is already required; and (3) Supplemental Environmental Projects, where funds are used to address impacts of the spill on local communities and the environment.  

LA Waterkeeper supports the overall fine that the Regional Board is imposing. The organization also believes that a significant amount of that fine needs to go to the State to send a clear message that these spills are not acceptable -- but we believe the vast majority of the penalty should stay local to ensure improvements in the system that failed and remediation of harm done through this incident. In order to support a settlement from LASAN, LA Waterkeeper, and our partners want to see progress made on a few key points as part of the settlement. Those are: 

• Having LASAN commit investments toward Enhanced Compliance Actions that accelerate Hyperion’s progress toward its wastewater recycling future (to meet the City of LA’s 2035 recycling goal); 

• Requiring LASAN to pay for an independent expert consultant panel on wastewater recycling to provide recommendations on best approaches for a regional reuse system, especially through integrating the City’s recycling plans at Hyperion with the Metropolitan Water District’s Pure Water Southern California project; 

• Ensuring the City hires a dedicated senior staff member to lead its wastewater recycling efforts and to meet its 2035 target; 

• Ensuring LASAN agrees to upgrade to rapid bacteria testing methods at Hyperion in order to better protect public health following future sewage spills; and 

• Having LASAN complete a robust personnel needs assessment to make Hyperion’s ambitious recycling project launch successfully and on schedule. 

Other funds collected from the settlement should be locally invested through Supplemental Environmental Projects, which by design would remediate harm caused by the massive spill by supporting projects that directly benefit local natural areas and surrounding communities.   

Local Investment: Sensible, But an Uphill Climb 

We believe this common-sense approach to a resolution will provide a sufficient warning to the City that it needs to improve operations while fostering needed investments to modernize our wastewater system and remediate local harm. But this approach runs counter to current State Board policies. Specifically, the State Board requires at least 50% of fines to go to the State Board’s Cleanup & Abatement Account.  Using the Regional Board’s proposed penalty, more than $10M would go to a state account that notoriously lacks transparency and doesn’t have a mechanism to ensure funds are directed to local communities and natural areas that were harmed by the incident. 

But the State Board’s enforcement office still has discretion to make exceptions to this "fifty percent” policy. Given the significant damage caused by this large-scale spill and the need for significant local investment to modernize LA’s sewage system, we urge the State Board to make an exception in the case of this massive spill. Earmarking $2.1M (10% of the proposed penalty) to the state fund would still send a strong message while ensuring the majority of the penalty will help to modernize our current wastewater system.  

California Coastkeeper Alliance is currently sponsoring legislation, AB 753, that would address this problem by ensuring more money from fines from spills is directed back to impacted communities. We have heard disturbing reports that the State Board opposes this legislation (which has bipartisan support and no other opposition). We hope the State Board will embrace this common-sense approach, and urge our legislators to support and pass this important bill to guarantee more local reinvestment of fines collected from discharge violations. 

It Doesn’t End With Hyperion 

While we expect a settlement to be reached between the LA Regional Board and LASAN over the Hyperion spill in the coming months, the fight doesn’t end there. Our preliminary research has indicated the rate of sewage spills has not slowed down since this incident two years ago, and in fact, the frequency of large-scale spills has been increasing. Unfortunately, this Hyperion spill was not an isolated incident.  

As we have covered previously, less than 6 months after the catastrophic spill at Hyperion, there was another major spill that resulted in sewage flooding the streets in the City of Carson, where it subsequently spilled into Dominguez channel.  To date, the Regional Board has not proposed a fine for that significant spill. 

No swimming sign. Photo by Noah Negishi.

The trend of increased sewage spills has continued in the first half of 2023. In April, an LACSD spill in Downey sent 250,000 gallons of sewage into the LA River, resulting in the closure of several beaches in Long Beach. In June, LA County spilled 50,000 gallons into the Alhambra Wash, where it entered the Long Beach coastal area and prompted even more beach closures. Just last month, a Malibu Lagoon sewage spill allowed 5,000 gallons of sewage to enter the lagoon, forcing closures at Malibu Lagoon State Beach. Two days later, a spill of 30,000 gallons of sewage in Rancho Palos Verdes was absorbed into dry creek bed, leading to even more beach closures. 

These spills show that our current system is not working. With the State about to celebrate Swimmable California Day on July 25, backsliding on sewage spills that put swimmers, paddlers and our marine ecosystems at risk is simply not acceptable. 

To prevent future catastrophic incidents, we must invest in modernizing our wastewater infrastructure and transforming it into a state-of-the-art water purification system. And one way to do this is by holding agencies that cause spills fully accountable to make needed and overdue investments in our systems.