Cities Stem Flow of Poisons Into Ocean : Pollutants: The amount of metallic toxins dumped from sewers off Huntington Beach has declined by 82% in the past 15 years--23% in the last year alone.

Flakes of chromium rinsed off airplane parts. Silver residue washed down the drain in photographers’ dark rooms. Bits of lead eroded from old plumbing. Every day, more than 300 pounds of toxic metals are flushed through Orange County’s sewers and into the ocean.

But that’s the bad news. The good news is that the metallic poisons pumped into the ocean off Huntington Beach through the county’s sewer system have declined by 82% in the past 15 years--23% in the last year alone, sanitation officials report.

Throughout Southern California, officials are doing just as well in cleaning up the sewers, if not better. Los Angeles County has reduced by 93% the metals flowing into the ocean from its outfall pipe compared with 1976, while the city of Los Angeles eliminated 83%.

“It’s rather striking to see what some municipalities were discharging in the ‘70s compared with today,” said William Pierce, chief of compliance for the western office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “We’ve been making some rather substantial progress, and it is a result of a major initiative that took place throughout the state.”

Most of the credit for the vast improvement goes to increasingly stringent federal and state clean-water laws, which require businesses to cleanse their industrial waste water before flushing it down the drain. Enforcing the laws are local pollution “cops” whose job includes pre-dawn visits to manholes to sample sewer water and catch illegal dumping.

“Industry is beginning to realize more and more that pollution prevention pays,” said Blake Anderson, technical director of the Orange County Sanitation Districts, which operates the county’s main waste water treatment system. “They’re finding out they’re either going to get hammered by us for dumping in the sewers or by other environmental agencies enforcing other laws.”

At stake in the battle to clean up the waste water are the creatures that inhabit the ocean, especially those that thrive on the ocean bottom. If uncontrolled, toxic metals, such as lead and cadmium, can accumulate in sediments and contaminate the organisms that are a key link in the food chain.

Environmentalists say even the lower amounts of pollutants are too much because no one really knows how much pollution the ocean ecosystem can withstand. They urge a more thorough cleansing of the effluent, called secondary treatment, to remove even more contaminants.

“It really isn’t that bad in Orange County, but considering how little industry we have, compared to Los Angeles, it’s not that good either,” said Gordon Labedz, head of a clean-water task force of the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental/ocean recreation group based in Huntington Beach. “The ocean shouldn’t be a dump. True, it’s offshore, but the swells march toward shore and that is a very, very popular surfing beach.”

Every day, more than 900 pounds of lead, copper, silver, zinc, cadmium, chromium and nickel are flushed into the sewer system in the waste water created by the 2 million Orange County residents from Irvine north, according to sanitation district reports. (Residents south of Irvine are served by a separate sanitation district.)

About one-third of that--329 pounds of metals a day--flows into the ocean 5 miles off Huntington State Beach, in 200 feet of water, via an undersea pipeline. The rest is filtered out at treatment plants and winds up in sludge hauled to landfills.

About twice that amount is discharged by Los Angeles County’s sanitation system off Palos Verdes and another 411 pounds a day are pumped into Santa Monica Bay from the city of Los Angeles’ Hyperion sewage-treatment plant.

The sources of the metals are ubiquitous, everything from dental supply companies and corroding household plumbing to aerospace plants and circuit board manufacturers.

As recently as 1986, almost a ton of metals was discharged daily into the ocean off Orange County, about six times more than today’s amounts.

Back then, industries such as aerospace plants and metal-plating shops would rinse off their parts and allow the runoff to flow into the sewer. Such dumping has since been banned by the federal Clean Water Act and similar state laws.

Now, most industries have installed expensive plants on their premises to filter out the metals and other chemicals before the water goes down the drain. The cost to install the equipment in a large company can exceed $1 million, while smaller plants spend about $50,000.

“More and more of the industries are being brought into the regulatory fold as we go along,” said Pierce of the EPA.

Enforcing the laws has been difficult for sanitation agencies because it means watching what is tossed down the drain at thousands of businesses in Orange County alone.

The Orange County Sanitation Districts spends about $2.5 million a year on source control, conducting 3,500 inspections of industries last year and collecting 4,600 samples of sewer water. Of more than 400 major industrial plants, major violations were found at a dozen.

So far, the effort to clean up the sewers has been so effective that Orange County’s waste meets pollution standards for toxic metals even before it is cleaned up at treatment plants.

But the effort cannot end there. Laws are becoming increasingly stringent, limiting the level of toxic materials in the effluent, but the county is still growing, so more vigilance is required.

The enormous declines of the past are probably over because most industries are already under control, Anderson said, so sanitation officials are now trying to get companies to change the materials and manufacturing processes they use.

“We have great hopes for waste minimization,” Anderson said. “We’ll have more movement toward use of more benign materials, such as the aerospace industry substituting other heavy metals for cadmium in fasteners.”

Non-industrial sources also are being targeted. Letters were sent recently to doctors, dentists and hospitals, warning them that spent solutions containing silver have to be treated before they are dumped down drains.

California counties and cities “have already gone after the major dischargers in their systems. Now, they’re placing a greater emphasis on the more diverse sources, and that’s going to be difficult,” Pierce said.

“We’re talking about auto repair shops and photo development rooms, and then there’s the broader source of homeowners, who flush these materials down the drain unknowingly and add to the pollution burden.”

The biggest challenge will be households. Orange County sanitation officials believe that just as much comes from homes as it does industry, and sources include skin lotions, paint, pharmaceutical ointments and dark rooms.

“You can pass ordinances prohibiting it, but it becomes inordinately difficult to enforce in households. The best thing to do is to educate the public about the materials they use,” Pierce said.

Even though the pollutants are diluted at sea, some marine creatures are extremely sensitive to accumulation of metals and other toxic compounds.

Studies by marine scientists show some changes in the tiny bottom-dwelling marine organisms at Orange County’s outfall site. Almost 600 species still live there, but the mix of organisms is different than normal; some creatures are more abundant, some less, according to studies conducted for the county by the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project in Long Beach.

None of the changes are considered major, however, and fish populations in the area haven’t appeared to suffer, according to the research.

County officials hope the steady decline in pollutants helps persuade the EPA to renew a controversial waiver that exempts Orange County from a key provision of the national clean-water law.

The exemption allows Orange County to subject only half its waste to secondary treatment, a process that eliminates more pollutants. Orange County had been granted the waiver in the past because its waste already meets pollution standards, and it is discharged in deep ocean waters. But laws have become more stringent since then.

If the five-year waiver, which has expired, is not renewed by the EPA, the county must spend about $1.4 billion upgrading its treatment plants.

Pierce said it will be another six months before the EPA decides.

TOXIC METALS

Several hundred pounds of toxic metals are discharged into the ocean daily from Orange County’s sanitation system. The substances, which can endanger marine life, are found in waste water flushed down the drain by businesses and households. Sanitation officials throughout Southern California have succeeded in dramatically reducing the metals discharged into the ocean by targeting industrial dumpers.

Waste Water Toxic Metals Emitted % Change (Million Gallons into Ocean in Metals Region per Day) (Pounds per Day) since 1976 Orange County 268 329 -82% Los Angeles County 500 618 -93% Los Angeles City 355 411 -83%

Sources of Orange County Metals in Ocean Effluent Metal: Cadmium Amount Discharged (Pounds per Day): 3 Common Uses: Used in electroplating, chemical manufacture, production of cars, airplanes, appliances, tools. Metal: Chromium Amount Discharged (Pounds per Day): 17 Common Uses: Used mostly in electroplating. Also used to line air conditioners and cooling towers. Metal: Copper Amount Discharged (Pounds per Day): 98 Common Uses: Used by printed circuit-board industry. Also used to line household plumbing. Metal: Lead Amount Discharged (Pounds per Day): 15 Common Uses: Used to produce batteries, paints, circuit boards. Also can erode from household plumbing. Metal: Nickel Amount Discharged (Pounds per Day): 50 Common Uses: Used to produce stainless steel, batteries, magnets, spark plugs. Also found in paint, lacquer. Metal: Silver Amount Discharged (Pounds per Day): 15 Common Uses: Photoprocessing labs are largest source. Also used to produce dental and medical supplies. Metal: Zinc Amount Discharged (Pounds per Day): 131 Common Uses: Found in galvanized pipes in household water systems. Also found in common items such as cosmetics and antiseptics. Total metals: 329 Source: Orange and Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts; city of Los Angeles