City eyes state loan for sewer work
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The city will apply for a state loan to attack trouble in its central
sewer line, work that still only addresses a small fraction of what
Councilman Wayne Baglin called “major problems in our sewers.”
“The only good news is that we have a report,” Baglin said. “The
bad news is what the report says.”
The city has about 95 miles of sewer lines, not including private
lines leading from homes and businesses. The money that the City
Council, at its Tuesday meeting, agreed to go after will focus on
only about five miles, Baglin said.
The primary problems with sewer spills in the city, accounting for
about four of five reported cases, stem from tree roots cleared from
private lines by plumbers that tumble into the city’s main line and
eventually clog the system.
“This does not provide any funding to stop sewer spills caused by
tree roots from private sewer laterals,” Asst. City Manager John
Pietig said. “If we did all these improvements today, we would still
be having the sewer spill problems that we’re having right now.”
Baglin called Tuesday’s approval, along with the city’s recent
action against excessive restaurant grease in sewers, a good
beginning to dealing with mistakes made by councils 20 to 40 years
ago concerning pipe choices and sewer design.
The lack of maintenance since those decisions were made has left
city sewers in their volatile condition, Baglin said.
The city’s main line, the North Coast Interceptor, takes more than
2 million gallons of sewage through the city to a treatment plant in
Aliso Creek canyon every day. Its pipes are made of asbestos cement,
a material so shoddy that a survey discovered that no other city in
Southern California uses it, Baglin said.
“If it pops,” Laguna Beach Taxpayers Assn. spokesman Gary Alstot
said, “it’s going to be an exciting moment.”
The city hired the Boyle Engineering Company to redesign the North
Coast Interceptor and 26 sewage lift stations that take sewage to the
Interceptor, which is a single line always in use, thus incapable of
being studied.
The plan is to construct parallel lines for the two portions of
the Interceptor’s piping under the most pressure, which is scheduled
to start next fiscal year using state money loaned to the city at
about 2.6% interest.
“It was undoubtedly cheaper to install asbestos cement pipes 20
years ago than a more sturdy pipe, but it’s proving to be extremely
expensive in the long run,” Baglin said.
The cost of repairing only the Interceptor and lift stations is
estimated at $12 million, and assessing the problem with tree roots
in private lines would cost millions more.
Baglin said a friend on Thalia Street looked into paying to clear
tree roots from her home’s 40-year-old sewer lines herself and found
that the bill would be $10,000 to $15,000. The city would also have
to cooperate with 6,700 home and business owners.
At a Regional Water Quality Control board meeting last week at
City Hall, one board member and two Laguna Beach residents suggested
that fines be levied against the city for its high rate of sewer
spills, Baglin said, adding that the council is doing as much as it
can to repair decades of mistreatment.
“I feel that the Regional Water Quality Control board initiates
the problem once in a while because it sees to focus more on
reporting than it does on enforcing and cleaning up the water,”
Baglin said. “We’ve found that public agencies believe much more in
studies, spending and stalling than actually achieving anything.”
If a major spill does occur, Baglin said the regional board could
fine the city up to $10 a gallon per day.
City Manager Ken Frank expressed concern with the Interceptor’s
unknown condition, fearing the city might end up doing expensive,
unnecessary work.
“It may be that the line is in pristine condition,” Frank said.
Baglin and the council said the city couldn’t afford to hope for
the best, and needed to take quick action in hopes of avoiding a
major spill, especially with what was considered an extremely
low-interest-rate loan.
Two federal grants are already slated for next year’s budget to
repair 18 of the city’s most problematic miles of sewer lines. That
project, the North Coast Interceptor project and the city’s
requirements upon restaurant owners to keep grease out of their
drains will all be ongoing as the city decides how to tackle the
clogging tree roots.
“We have a long way to go,” Baglin said.
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