[ More Than a Million Gallons of Raw Sewage Surged From Manholes and Onto South Bay Beaches on a Sunday Morning in January, Because of a Mechanical Breakdown so Severe It Took Until 1 A.M. The Next Day to Cap the Putrid Spill.... ]
More than a million gallons of raw sewage surged from manholes and onto South Bay beaches on a Sunday morning in January, because of a mechanical breakdown so severe it took until 1 a.m. the next day to cap the putrid spill.
The Jan. 15-16 debacle at a Manhattan Beach wastewater pumping plant mainly fouled the sand in spots in Manhattan and Hermosa Beach, and allowed some 65,000 gallons of the spill to reach the ocean. Primary and backup pumps had failed during an outage of the phone network that the monitoring system relied upon.
The 1.5 million gallons was one of the largest spills ever in Los Angeles County and, unlike most such massive leaks, this one happened in dry weather, with no rainfall to dilute the sewage. As a result, most of the escaping runoff was deposited on the beaches. Trucks quickly came to pump it away.
Still, the sea along the entire South Bay was off-limits for several days before testing clean. Meanwhile, a similarly quick remedy for the sand itself was not to be.
The sand was reopened 10 days after the spill, but shortly after that health authorities found the shore was still rife with bacteria where the sewage had pooled in Manhattan and Hermosa.
It was re-closed at the end of January, and the affected areas weren’t declared safe until mid-March. The local economic impact was estimated at more than $1 million because of closed beaches.
The Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts was responsible for the spill and in December agreed to pay a $2.5 million fine for the incident along with 92 other spills over a five-year span. While some of the money will go to local environmental projects, $2.2 million will be sent to develop a nature center in the San Gabriel Valley.
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