Environment, Growth Are Issues in Races : El Segundo: A Hyperion plant lawsuit and conflict charges make ethics and environmental policies the key issues in a 5-candidate race.

El Segundo’s get-tough stance against Los Angeles’ Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant and conflict-of-interest charges against two City Council members have made environmental quality and ethics the key issues in the race for two council seats Tuesday.

Incumbent Alan West, a 61-year-old retired businessman and one of the councilmen charged with conflict in complaints to the state Fair Political Practices Commission, is seeking reelection in the five-way race. Other candidates in the at-large election are Terry L. Ceretto, 41, an aerospace test technician; J.B. Wise, 35, an electrical contractor; Thomas A. Jolly, 61, a mechanical designer and inventor, and civil engineer Gerhardt Van Drie, 64.

Three of the four challengers have been unsuccessful candidates before: Jolly in 1986, Wise in 1988 and Van Drie 12 years ago.

Ceretto and Jolly are running as a team, saying that their philosophies are alike. “We are strictly pro-residential and are willing to tolerate business as it benefits the residents,” Jolly said.

Councilman H.R. (Bob) Anderson, the other official charged with conflict before the FPPC, filed for reelection but withdrew from the race Feb. 20, citing health problems. His name, however, remains on the ballot.

Though it still retains a small-town America atmosphere with a Main Street of mom and pop businesses, the political debate on quality of life here is shaped by two giants of the urban landscape: Los Angeles International Airport and Hyperion.

Just south of LAX, El Segundo has been battling the airport for more than a decade over noise and safety. Residents also have been angry for years with Hyperion, which is between the city and the ocean. El Segundo this week sued the city of Los Angeles, which operates the sewage plant, saying its emissions, noise and odors hurt residents’ health and the environment.

“We get hit from all directions. Los Angeles wants to use this (city) as a . . . toxic waste dump,” complains Ceretto.

The council’s heightened sensitivity to environmental issues was also shown in March when it endorsed proposals before the Legislature and the AQMD that would ban the bulk storage of highly toxic hydrogen fluoride gas in urban areas. The Allied Signal Inc. chemical plant in El Segundo uses the chemical to produce refrigerants.

The actions against Hyperion and the airport have broad acceptance in the city.

All of the candidates praise the unanimous council vote authorizing the Hyperion suit. Similarly, they all favor pressuring Hyperion officials into putting new sewage treatment tanks--called digesters--north of Imperial Highway and away from El Segundo.

Van Drie calls the assault on Hyperion and LAX a matter of “protecting my turf,” contending that residential property values in El Segundo are dropping because of the problems.

Wise advocates installing monitoring equipment in the city to identify, and then publicize, airlines whose pilots make early, noisy turns over the city after taking off from LAX.

Ceretto said the city should get tougher on the airport, following its own lead in the Hyperion problem by suing the airport as a public nuisance.

Jolly said he wants to get 50 to 100 people to inundate Hyperion and the airport with phone calls every time there’s a problem. “That will result in a quick change,” he said.

West, who voted for the Hyperion suit but was the lone councilman opposed to the hydrogen fluoride ban, said the city has done everything it can to fight airport noise short of a lawsuit. He said he would support a suit if the city hired experts, as it did to fight Hyperion, and developed a solid case against the plant.

The conflict-of-interest controversies and continued factionalism on the council have their roots in the bitter 1986 election in which West and Anderson were elected while vowing to fire then-City Manager Nicholas Romaniello.

They said that under Romaniello’s management, the city had kept too heavy a tax burden on business. The pair defeated Mayor Charles (Chip) Armstrong and Councilwoman Le Synadinos, who argued that businesses should continue to pay for most of the cost of city services. Romaniello was fired.

West and Anderson found themselves in the minority, however, when voters in 1988 gave power to a pro-resident faction that has opposed new taxes on residents, protected residential zones and controlled density. Councilmen Scot Dannen and Jim Clutter were elected that year, forming a majority with Mayor Carl Jacobson.

A frequent critic of both Anderson and West, Dannen in January filed an FPPC complaint against Anderson. It alleged that Anderson’s ownership of about $470,000 in Chevron stock created a conflict of interest when he participated in 1988 and 1989 in council business affecting the oil company. Anderson, a retired Chevron employee, has denied the charge. Chevron, a major landowner and taxpayer in the city, created El Segundo after building its refinery there in 1911.

A month later, West was accused of conflict of interest in an FPPC complaint filed by the widow of former Mayor Armstrong. Helen Armstrong contended that West’s votes between 1987 and 1989 on city-sponsored downtown promotions and improvements created a conflict because they could have benefited a downtown art supply store he owns. West said the charge was an attempt to discredit him.

West also clashed with Dannen, accusing him of attempted bribery. In an affidavit filed with the Police Department, West charged that in a conversation during a bicycle ride along the beach in early January, Dannen offered to back off on filing FPPC charges against Anderson if West did him a political favor.

The Los Angeles County district attorney declined to file criminal charges against Dannen.

Dannen has branded the assertions “unfounded,” saying he took the bike ride with West “to see if we can find common ground so as not to be at each other’s throats.”

The political clashes and conflict charges have kept the council in turmoil for months.

Among the candidates, Wise speaks most strongly and most often about the harm created by such infighting.

“It reflects badly for the city,” said Wise, who frequently gets up at council meetings to criticize the incumbents for acrimonious conduct.

Jolly also said the atmosphere at meetings is “embarrassing and detrimental in every respect.” While he said there is “a genuine problem in ethics on the council,” he would not discuss specifics.

Ceretto and Van Drie view the clashes as differences of opinion that can be expected among five people. Van Drie said West and Anderson used “bad judgment” but did not do so intentionally.

West said the biggest problem for the council is not conflict of interest but rather its succumbing to political pressures. The council is unable “to look at an issue rationally and sensibly assess it,” he said.

An an example, he cited the vote last week to support a hydrogen fluoride ban. West called it a “purely political vote,” adding that Allied-Signal “is not a problem. It’s been there for 70 years. Why suddenly do we do this?” He said the South Coast Air Quality Management District is the proper agency to deal with the problem.

Dannen, who pushed the hydrogen fluoride vote in the council, responded that the chemical “poses a serious threat to the health and safety of the people of California.”

(The AQMD is to vote today on the ban, while a separate proposal in Sacramento was tabled by a legislative committee Tuesday.)

With campaigning based primarily on lawn signs and distribution of literature, Wise said he probably will spend between $3,000 and $4,000. West anticipates spending $2,800, Van Drie and Ceretto $1,000, and Jolly a maximum of $2,000.