Los Angeles Coastal Sewer, Old Septic Tanks Cited As Primary Cause of Santa Monica Bay Pollution
Attention Santa Monica Tea Party members: This is a shot from Google Earth. The orange-lines are from a USGS earthquake fault overlay app. Shown here are the Malibu, Potrero Canyon and Santa Monica earthquake faults. Please ignore the large patch of brown at the lower left of this shot. This portion of the picture, seen as a low-resolution brown patch, is the result of a color balance problem between different satellite cameras which stitched the Google Earth shots together back in the earlier days of Google Earth. This shot was taken July 31, 2007. Focus instead on the two distinctly different brown color tones seen hugging the Santa Monica Bay coastline. In this document you will see additional Google Earth close-ups of three areas along the Pacific Palisades-Santa Monica coastline:
1. The area immediately above and below the Potrero Canyon earthquake fault line shows the difference in how fecal coliform (human crap) pollution looks when it floats on top of the water, as seen at the upper left identified as “Heal the Bay top-of-water ‘pollution plume’”, and what the pollution looks like when the heavier fecal coliform sinks to the bottom of the water, exactly as happens in a septic tank, as seen below the shorter orange line at center which designates the off-shore-to-on-shore Potrero Canyon earthquake fault in the center of the picture.
2. The area at the intersections of Chautauqua Blvd. and West Channel Road at Pacific Coast Highway designated “1940 WPA stormwater drain to ocean” is the lowest land-level point in northwestern Los Angeles County where land-level and sea level meet. Under specific conditions the water table under-land is identical to sea level under-sand, enabling capillary action flow of effluent from land to sea. The Works Projects Administration built a stormwater channel here in 1940 after the great Los Angeles rainstorms of 1939 washed out or otherwise destroyed almost every business in the Santa Monica Canyon. However, that WPA stormwater drain bypassed Rustic Canyon Creek and the two dozen plus septic tanks which were installed along the creek during the twenties and thirties when other early Los Angeles residents began to migrate from downtown and settle along the creek on the perimeter of Will Rogers’ ranch. What you will see below is a close-up Google Earth shot of heavier, sludge-consistency crap forming an alluvial “crap fan” on the ocean bottom as the effluent seeps out of the sand and into the sea water. Further down in this document January 2011 surface incidenceshots vividly show scum-layer top-of-water pollution still exiting (in greatest suspected proportion) from these septic tanks.
3. The area at the beach in Santa Monica below the bluffs intersection of Wilshire Blvd. and Pacific Coast Highway aka Palisades Beach Road. Here again the alluvial crap fan can be seen sitting on the bottom of the ocean. But notice also, the detail of the alluvial fan can be seen on the sand as what appears to be a much wetter, triangular-shaped area of the beach.
These shots from Google Earth captured a point in time when weather conditions along the Santa Monica Bay were stable and apparently pretty calm underneath the water’s surface. If you scroll through most of the Google Earth satellite images under the “historical imagery” tab the ocean is much more turbulent under the water at almost all times. However, the weather and possibly under water conditions of July 31, 2007 were recently duplicated in January of 2011 in the aftermath of the extremely heavy flash rainstorms that pelted the Pacific Palisades/Santa Monica shoreline in December 2010. And the broken-in-multiple-places condition of Los Angeles Coastal Interceptor Sewer (CIS), the alleged main fecal coliform pollution source of this document, is 3 1/2 years older. Older to the point where it appears the CIS has collapsed as it crosses underneath the Highway 1/Santa Monica freeway just past the McClure Tunnel going eastbound. This document is proffered as an agenda item the Santa Monica Tea Party may wish to explore further.
A PROPOSED SANTA MONICA TEA PARTY (SMTP) AGENDA
The best way for the SMTP to effect meaningful change; to make a real Tea Party-like constitutional-conservative contribution to the nationwide Tea Party movement is to involve all citizens of Los Angeles with an issue most important to us all, Public Health and Safety vis-à-vis a clean water supply, a well-maintained sewer system and a Santa Monica Bay which doesn’t become loaded with human fecal coliform every time we have a huge storm.
Los Angeles Public Works has for the last two decades concealed the fact that the Los Angeles sewer infrastructure is in far worse condition than they will admit. This collapsing infrastructure is exacerbated in coastal cities like Santa Monica because of the extensive repair that never took place to the Los Angeles-Santa Monica sewer and storm drain infrastructures in the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Now, as can be seen and felt when one drives eastbound thru the dip just past the McClure Tunnel, thousands of people every day have been made aware that “critical mass” overload of our streets has been reached. Our sewers, exacerbated by the flash storms of December are collapsing at their weakest points. Just past the McClure tunnel driving eastward on the I-10 is the most current, most blatant and most undeniable example of the City of Los Angeles’ Bureau of Sanitation ongoing failure to properly repair the Coastal Interceptor Sewer.
I have two years of research I’d like to present at the next meeting of the SMPT. I can show what I believe to be irrefutable evidence that Los Angeles Public Works and the City departments under its purview is guilty of covering up the extreme negligence of the L.A. Bureau of Sanitation (BOS) and that the L.A. Bureaus of Engineering (BOE) and Street Services (BOSS) have been working to cover up the BOS’ failure to keep our major sewerage carrying pipe, the Coastal Interceptor Sewer, in an adequate containment condition as it travels alongside and or underneath Pacific Coast Highway along the length of the Santa Monica Bay.
Here is the backstory of the City of Los Angeles’ major rip-off against its taxpaying citizens and the citizens of the independent City of Santa Monica whose City revenue income goes toward paying the wastewater carry-away fee which goes to the City of Los Angeles for maintenance of the Coastal Interceptor Sewer. >
A BIT OF BACKGROUND: THE EPA AND THE CLEAN WATER ACT
The first act of the EPA at its formation in 1971 was to issue the Clean Water Act. Water is something Northern California has always had and Southern California has always needed. A lattice-work of earthquake faults is what Los Angeles’ pressurized, fresh water-carrying and non-pressurized, gravity-flow, wastewater (sewage) carryinginfrastructure is built upon. Los Angeles County’s under-the-pipeline-infrastructure latticework of earth quake faults and their tens of thousands of splays have never been fully-mapped. It appears for the last seventeen years that materials-wise the BOS and BOE have elected to stick with the old standby for sewers, clay. That is, when laying new sections of sewer to repair older collapsed clay piping the same vulnerable-to-earth-movement clay piping is used again.
From my research I have found that up to the late nineties geologists have warned Los Angeles Public Works and the L.A. engineering departments about the unmapped latticework of tens of thousands more splays from those faults which the geologists write as being capable of inflicting serious damage to the 7000+ miles of both the pressurized and non-pressurized piping. In the nineties one team of geologists has indicated that the Potrero Canyon fault may experience in the not too distant future a temblor equivalent in magnitude to ’94 Northridge.
Setting aside the vital freshwater needs of Los Angeles for a minute (the LADWP’s responsibility) here is a further expose on the Coastal Interceptor sewer and the septic tanks of Rustic Canyon. Could this lead to a definitive action plan for the Santa Monica Tea Party to resurrect the spirit of Los Angeles’ early founders whose intention it was to build and maintain a secure and fully functional sub-surface infrastructure based on due-diligence building and maintenance practices of Los Angeles sewer and stormwater drain systems with a full awareness of Southern California’s unstable underground?
As the SMTP’s volunteer Media Coordinator from our first January 9, 2010 meeting I would like to propose an agenda for our SMPT which I believe could unite other Southern California Tea Party groups as well as engender the support of many of the dozens of local-town-level City Councils whose influence for the last two decades has been largely marginalized by the über liberal Los Angeles City Council, Los Angeles Public Works, the Bureau of Engineering, the Bureau of Sanitation and the Bureau of Street Services.
These councils and departments are spending an approximate $3.2 billion taxpayer financed budget “conquering-by-dividing” its residents in L.A.’s smaller cities and towns against each other while supposedly watching after the our waterwater, stormwater runoff and recycled water programs. This practice by the City of Los Angeles of conquering-by-dividing is the City’s version of California eco-progressivism, disguised as “environmental justice”, (formerly known as “social justice”) at work. California and more pointedly Los Angeles cannot hope to build a “Green jobs future” when our tax dollars go down the crapper, exiting into the Santa Monica Bay, now seen as a sea of Brown.
“WATCH WHAT THE OTHER HAND IS DOING” – Glenn Beck
This morning I went on a walk along the bluff in my El Medio Bluffs, Pacific Palisades neighborhood. As I was looking out over the majestic, calm Pacific Ocean I heard Glenn Beck say on his radio program, “How is it that the truth is so invisible to some people?” I thought to myself, ‘What if I could give the Santa Monica Tea Party some of the information I’ve discovered over the last couple of years about the culture of collusion that has been nurtured and encouraged within various Los Angeles City and County departments and supposed clean water organizations like Heal the Bay and the Santa Monica Baykeeper?
In the aftermath of the 1998 El Nino rainstorms these two eco-organizations sued the City for polluting the Santa Monica Bay. Heal the Bay sued the City claiming the beach closures were ordered by Los Angeles Public Health due to too-high levels of human fecal coliform polluting the bay. Heal the Bay then sued L.A. claiming the beach closures were the result of stormwater runoff. Stormwater runoff usually contains grease, oil from the street and fertilizer from lawns. So how the heck does the fecal coliform get in from stormwater? And how has Heal the Bay managed to get $2 billion of Los Angeles’ $3.2 billion wastewater, stormwater runoff and recycled water budget or 62% of the total?
Also in 1998, the Santa Monica Baykeeper sued the City for $2 billion claiming the beach closures were the result of broken sewer lines. The Los Angeles Bureaus of Sanitation (BOS), Engineering (BOE) then began to work with Heal the Bay. Seems Los Angeles, The City, liked the more genteel, politically correct sounding stormwater runoff story. It was progressive sounding! The City then ignored the Santa Monica Baykeeper’s “broken sewers” lawsuit for the next six years! Until, that is, Antonio Villaraigosa became mayor and the L.A. voters voted overwhelmingly for Prop. O, the so-called Clean Water Bond measure.
A POOR FECAL-COLIFORM TESTING MODEL BY SUPPOSED PROFESSIONAL TESTERS
So how does the Los Angeles Department of Public Health determine how much fecal coliform is too much fecal coliform? They take readings from the top of the water (only). They then determine the concentration, in parts per million, of how many parts of fecal coliform there are on top of the water versus how many parts of sea water there are by volume to a certain depth(?).
Taking readings from the top-of-the-water-only is about as dumb and scientifically indefensible as trying to determine how much crap there is in a septic tank by dipping a sample cup into the top of the septic tank. Wrong! As every person knows who has ever looked into the toilet bowl after their own personal “event” there is light crap and there is heavy crap. In septic tanks, waste that floats rises to the top and forms what is known as the scum layer. Anything heavier sinks to the bottom and forms the sludge layer. In the middle is a fairly clear layer which contains bacteria and chemicals such as nitrogen and phosphorous that act as fertilizers. As will be shown below the Coastal Interceptor Sewer has been by far (percentagewise) the main point-source of the crap that has gone into the Santa Monica Bay at her shoreline since (at least) the major rupture that occurred at the intersection of the Potrero Canyon earthquake fault line at Pacific Coast Highway and the Coastal Interceptor Sewer during the January 1994 6.8 Richter-scale Northridge quake jolt. The Northridge quake registered a 6.8 at its epicenter. Twenty some odd miles away the Coastal interceptor Sewer and the City of Santa Monica both sustained an only slightly reduced 6.0 Mw Richter-scale reading with over three dozen aftershocks that measured between 5.4 and 5.9.
How can Santa Monicans forget the devastation done to some of Santa Monica’s most venerable old-architecture buildings during the Northridge quake? One of the main reasons the devastation was so extensive is that the Potrero Canyon and Santa Monica fault lines are fairly shallow faults at only 3.2 miles underneath the surface. Plus the shearing force generated by the tectonic plates at these fault lines has traditionally had a very strong, upward-thrusting component vector.