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
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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,
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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) carrying infrastructure 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
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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),
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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 oldarchitecture 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.
For almost two decades Heal the Bay has measured only the scum-layer component of the crap
in the Santa Monica Bay. The Santa Monica Baykeeper, since they don’t have the capability to
measure fecal coliform themselves, uses the test measurement resources of the Natural
Resource Defense Council (NRDC). The NRDC also has traditionally measured only the lighter,
floating fecal coliform scum layer. However, the waters of our Santa Monica Bay have become
like a septic tank, due to what I term as the City of Los Angeles’ “environmental malfeasance”;
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failure to (ever) fully repair or replace the CIS with either stronger materials such as ductile
steel piping or by sleeving the older clay CIS sections internally with a prophylactic PVC rubber
tube.
A SECOND SOURCE OF SANTA MONICA BAY POLLUTION KNOWN TO THE L.A. CITY COUNCIL, PUBLIC
WORKS ET AL
A second source of fecal coliform comes out of the decades old, non-maintained septic tanks
that are buried alongside the bedrock creek that flows through Rustic Canyon at the periphery
of Will Roger’s State Park above Sunset Boulevard.
THE CITY OF SANTA MONICA VS. LOS ANGELES - AN 80-YEAR FIGHT BETWEEN SANTA MONICA AND LOS
ANGELES OVER NATURAL GAS AND OIL RIGHTS AND UNADJUDICATED (AKA STORMWATER RUNOFF)
WATER RIGHTS ON THE SANTA MONICA BAY WATERSHED
The offices of the Santa Monica Baykeeper and the NRDC are only a couple of blocks away from
each other in Santa Monica. So are the offices of Heal the Bay. Based on decades of clean water
and UNADJUDICATED water rights animosity between Santa Monica and the City and County of
Los Angeles the City of Santa Monica functions like a safe-city zone for Heal the Bay, the Santa
Monica Baykeeper and the NRDC from which these organizations can sue the City of Los
Angeles over water in all its manifestations; clean water, stormwater runoff, wastewater,
recycled water. The rivalry between Santa Monica and the City and County of Los Angeles goes
back decades. This Hatfield’s vs. McCoys-type of situation is and always has been one of
contention with accusations flying back and forth about who will or can somehow claim
ownership of the (at present) unadjudicated water rights of, in this instance, stormwater that
flows off our lawns, into our storm drains and directly into the ocean. At the same time the City
of Los Angeles has endeavored to keep charging Santa Monica “crap haul-away” fees for the
broken CIS that runs along under the shoreline of Santa Monica’s world famous beaches.
VISUAL PROOF OF THE BROKEN CALIFORNIA INTERCEPTOR SEWER LEAKING SCUM-LEVEL,
LIGHT & SLUDGE-LEVEL, HEAVY CRAP INTO THE SANTA MONICA BAY SINCE 1994
TRUTH , however, has no agenda. Here is a damning piece of the “puzzle of truth”, a Los
Angeles county earthquake damage assessment map, found in the 1996 City of Los Angeles
Safety Element which California State law at the time regarding damage assessment in the
aftermath of an earthquake, the Director of City Planning was compelled to put into the Safety
Element (in the appendix). Presented below is the earthquake damage assessment map Los
Angeles City Planning put out in March 1994, two months after the Northridge quake per “
California State seismic event review law policy” that existed at the time.
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If we use the Google Earth-USGS earthquake fault overlay software on top of the areas outlined here as
Alquist-Priolo Special Study Zones & Fault Rupture Study Areas it can be seen that all known earthquake
faults within Los Angeles County fall within these areas. Note that the Potrero Canyon Fault Rupture
Study Area would have been contained in the only off-shore on-shore earthquake fault area within the
Santa Monica Bay but that no City of Santa Monica earthquake fault study areas are shown because, to
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put it bluntly, it appears Los Angeles City Planning never did care to offer post-seismic sub-surface event
engineering analysis to the City of Santa Monica even though both the City of Santa Monica and the City
of Los Angeles were aware that the earthquake-ruptured Coastal Interceptor Sewer travels under-sand
through the entire Santa Monica City-State of California coastline.
THE SANTA MONICA BAY AS A SEPTIC TANK: WHERE ARE WE NOW??
L.A.’S RUPTURED, CRUMBLING COASTAL INTERCEPTER SEWER: THE NRDC’S “81% UNKNOWN”
POLLUTION SOURCE
THE FALLACY OF THE L.A. CITY ENGINEER’S & HEAL THE BAY’S $2 BILLION “3% STORMWATER RUNOFF”
PLAN, AKA LOS ANGELES USING PROP.O FUNDS TO BEGIN BUILDING A ONE MILLION GALLON PLUS
OKLAHOMA CITY-STYLE “BUNKER-BUSTER” BOMB ENCLOSURE UNDER THE TEMESCAL CANYON PARK
CHILDRENS’ PLAYGROUND (in Part 2 to follow)
You can’t fool Mother Nature. Commuters from Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica who use
Pacific Coast Highway to get to work inland are no doubt aware of the not-too-wide, eight-inch deep dip
in the asphalt just past the exit to the McClure tunnel as California Route 1 becomes the Santa Monica
Freeway. What these commuters are crossing over and being jolted from is yet another collapsing
section of the decades-old, reprehensively “maintained” Coastal Interceptor Sewer (CIS). That point
beyond the McClure Tunnel being driven over is one of tens of suspected breaks or so-called “earth
movement” ruptures that have compromised the crap-carrying integrity of Los Angeles’ only major
sewer pipe which runs along the California coastline underneath and alongside Pacific Coast Highway.
This dip was felt to be developing about five months ago. This crumble-point is the fourth this author
has been able to visually identify in the past two years along the four mile length of PCH/CIS from Sunset
and PCH in northwestern Pacific Palisades to the McClure tunnel in south eastern Santa
Monica. Beginning at Will Rogers State Beach in Pacific Palisades three other crumble and/or rupture
points of ongoing crap spill can be seen by using Google Earth; adjusting the historical imagery date to
July 31, 2007; using a free USGS earthquake fault overlay app; and zooming in and out as you follow this
world famous section of our California coastline.
Below is the ongoing legacy of the first identifiable major California Interceptor Sewer rupture which
took place January 17, 1994. At the time of that 6.8 Richter-scale earthquake in Northridge the California
Interceptor Sewer suffered a 6.0 Mw Richter initial jolt at the junction of north-to-south running Potrero
Canyon and east-to-west running Will Rogers State Beach. The earthquake fault here is the specific offshore-to-onshore section of the Malibu Coast-Santa Monica-Raymond-Cucamonga fault system which I
call the Potrero Canyon Fault. As can be seen by the orange earthquake overlay line this shallow, 3.2
mile deep fault extends into the Santa Monica Bay less than 100 yards north of the Los Angeles
Lifeguard Station, bisects the Coastal Interceptor Sewer buried underground, then continues across
Pacific Coast Highway into Potrero Canyon, then continues across the Huntington
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Palisades neighborhood. At the time of this major earthquake event the current Los Angeles City
Engineer was then L.A’s Principal Sanitary Engineer and Richard Riordan was mayor.
Close-up of both types of septic tank spills seen at the rupture-point of the Coastal Interceptor Sewer
(CIS) along PCH below Temescal Canyon Road. 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. Sewage through the CIS flows west to east (here left to right) parallel
to Will Rogers State Beach. Note sludge-consistency fecal coliform (crap) can be seen at lower center
right, on ocean floor, under the off-shore-to-on-shore running Potrero Canyon earthquake fault line. To
date, ostensibly, neither Heal the Bay nor the NRDC has ever discovered much less measured this
obviously humongous quantity of bottom-dwelling heavier crap, believed to be by far the largest source
of human fecal coliform polluting the Santa Monica Bay. Meanwhile, lighter so-called scum-consistency
fecal coliform, the type Heal the Bay claims makes surfers sick, can be seen floating on top of the water
to the upper left, forming Heal the Bay’s so-called “pollution plume”.
-Reporting on the appearance and severity of this pollution plume is what has enabled Heal the Bay to
access millions of $$$ of Federal funding under the Beach Act and to publish their Beach Report Card for
over 16 years.
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-The Coastal Interceptor Sewer, a primary City of Los Angeles Health and Safety revenue source
ostensibly managed by Public Works’ Bureau of Sanitation was critically ruptured during the January 17,
1994 Northridge quake then promptly began leaking raw human crap toward the ocean via capillary
action.
-The CIS carries crap from Malibu and Pacific Palisades then passes through Santa Monica collecting
substantial tax and/or fee revenue for L.A., then on to the Hyperion Wastewater Treatment Plant in El
Segundo.
-The L.A.Bureau of Sanitation has had the ability to view damage inside non-pressurized, gravity flow,
sewage-carrying pipes as well as to internally PVC-sleeve these broken pipes so they don’t leak crap out
into the sand since before the Northridge quake. The failure by the BOS & BOE to sleeve the CIS after
1/17/1994 could be considered a violation of the City’s basic Health and Safety mandate to its citizens.
- In the nineties, a 3000’ replacement of CIS pipe above the Potrero Canyon earthquake fault between
Sunset Blvd. and Temescal Canyon Road reportedly suffered over 70 ruptures from earth movement
before completion. There were numerous citizen reports of hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell)
odors indicating the BOS/BOE is still not using an internal PVC pipe sleeve in this earth movement-prone
area for replacement of (traditional) baked-clay piping. Per the Southern California Geologic Survey
website calculator the area surrounding the Potrero Canyon earthquake fault has sustained over 500
greater than 3.0 Richter “earth movements” since 1994.
- Note however that since this author has pointed out these Google Earth shots to the Los Angeles City
Engineer via a25+ page expose’ dossier, and subsequently to Los Angeles Public Works officials, the City
has begun using ductile steel piping for new portions of the CIS’ parallel coastal sewer relief piping
system instead of the traditional (for the last 100 years in Los Angles sewers anyway) clay piping.
-Note that sewer pipes are non-pressurized systems so clay has always been deemed an acceptable
material to use as long as geotechnical analysis has shown the ground to be stable. In Los Angeles,
ductile steel piping is a newer, stronger piping material that is being used to replace the 60-100 yearold pressurized fresh water cast iron piping whenever a gigantic new sink-hole appears, and sometimes
gobbles up a car or two, as Los Angeles’ older cast iron fresh water mains continue to rupture with
alarming frequency. Many if not most times these ruptures are initiated by minute underground earth
movements, repeated thousands of times, caused by overweight vehicles on old Los Angeles streets not
originally designed to carry such loads. (Refer to the History Channel’s documentary, “America’s
Crumbling Infrastructures” for verification.)
In late 2003 the Los Angeles City Council approved the greatly expanded usage of overweight
construction vehicles as a means to increase the cash-flow into City coffers as the construction boom
along the coast line ramped-up logarithmically .
MEANWHILE, THREE HUNDRED YARDS DOWN THE COAST FROM POTRERO CANYON WE FIND SEPTIC
TANK SEWAGE SPILLING OUT IN AN UNDERWATER “ALLUVIAL FAN” PATTERN. THIS FAN PATTERN IS
SUBSTANTIAL PROOF THE RUSTIC CANYON SEPTIC TANKS ARE PART OF THE NRDC’S “81% UNKNOWN
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SOURCES” OUTFALL FROM RUSTIC CANYON CREEK. THIS LOCATION, AT THE WEST CHANNEL
STORMDRAIN SYSTEM AT WEST CHANNEL ROAD AND PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY NEAR THE BORDER OF
PACIFIC PALISADES AND SANTA MONICA IS THE LOWEST ELEVATION POINT IN NORTH-WESTERN LOS
ANGELES COUNTY >>
THE TELL-TALE UNDERWATER ALLUVIAL POLLUTION FAN
This is the second pollution source along the four mile stretch of Santa Monica Bay-front encompassing
the Los Angeles city of Pacific Palisades and the independent city of Santa Monica. Note that this sludgelevel crap sitting underwater on the bottom of the beach is suspected to have come mostly from the
roughly two dozen septic tanks, including one septic tank on Mr. Steven Spielberg’s property, located
along Rustic Canyon Creek above Sunset Blvd. (See top-center yellow pin on first Google Earth Pacific
Palisades overview picture.) Mr. Spielberg’s septic tank was found on a Pacific Palisades septic tank
properties map issued by the Bureau of Sanitation on May 11, 2010 and cross-referenced to Google
Earth’s location of Mr. Spielberg’s residence. Rustic Canyon Creek is known to be bedrock in this area.
Thus, the fecal coliform leaking from the 70+-year old septic tanks nearby this Los Angeles Bureau of
Sanitation designated 303d “impaired river” cannot absorb into the riverbed but will instead flow further
downstream to the ocean. Also, in many places the composition of the earth about 30 feet underneath
the sand and dirt of the coastline is clay. Moreover, the east end of the very active Potrero Canyon
earthquake fault ends at Rustic Canyon Creek. An earthquake fault is like a crack in a wet sidewalk. And
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water will seek its lowest (sea) level. There are thus two ways by which the crap from the Rustic Canyon
septic tanks can get into the Santa Monica Bay.
Here is a surface incidence angle shot taken January 13, 2011 from the end of the El Medio bluff looking
down Will Rogers State Beach toward Santa Monica. This was over two weeks since our humongous, first
of the season, December rainstorms which raised the level of the water table at 100 yards on-shore at
the Coast Interceptor Sewer, to the same as sea level at high tide. Capillary action and the fact that the
human fecal coliform has had many years travel time, under sand, to reach the shoreline shows in this
photo. A fecal coliform pollution plume can be seen emanating from a) Potrero Canyon: b) Santa Monica
Canyon and PCH where Rustic Canyon Creek merges at the West Channel Storm drain and; c) further
down at PCH and Wilshire in front of the Santa Monica Pier.
Here, January 25th, twelve days later and five weeks after our December rainstorms is the same shot
taken from the same place on the El Medio bluff. Note the sea has been unusually calm in January but
the water table level on-shore and off-shore appear to have remained relatively equalized at Santa
Monica Canyon & PCH, the known lowest point of land and sea in northwestern Los Angeles County.
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AFTER YEARS OF REQUESTS BY THE SANTA MONICA BAYKEEPER THE BUREAU OF SANITATION ISSUES AN
OFFICIAL PROPERTY-LOCATION SPECIFIC MAP OF PACIC PALISADES SEPTIC TANK LOCATIONS
On May 11, 2010 the Bureau of Sanitation issued for the first time a Pacific Palisades area property map
showing individual septic tank locations nearby Rustic Canyon creek. These septic tanks are known by
the City to be causing Rustic Canyon creek to be identified as a 303d impaired river and known by Heal
the Bay and the Santa Monica Baykeeper to be a major cause of the scum-layer, top-of-water fecal
coliform pollution both groups have been measuring for years. Note: The Santa Monica Baykeeper has
relied on the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) measurements and the NRDC’s “Testing the
Waters” annual reports for over seventeen years.
The Santa Monica Baykeeper who first sued the City of Los Angeles during the El Nino rainstorms of
1998 for gross pollution of the Santa Monica Bay alleging broken sewers and non-maintained septic
tanks as the cause had been trying to get these septic tank locations from the City since 1998 to help
them in their $2 billion lawsuit against the City. The City agreed to accept responsibility for the lawsuit
and to begin repairing, cleaning or replacing broken sewers in a 2004 settlement. But the City of Los
Angeles Never gave the locations of these septic tanks until May, 2010 when the City sent a team of
Bureau of Sanitation personnel to present septic tank locations to neighborhood Community Council
groups all over Los Angeles County.
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Here is how the City of Los Angeles’ and L.A.’s 11th District sees the City of Santa Monica; as a city
surrounded by the City Los Angeles.
“People’s Republic of Santa Monica” completely surrounded by Los Angeles Council District 11: Blue line
at upper left designates the north-westernmost boundary line of Los Angeles City and County and the
northwestern boundary of the Santa Monica Bay. Council District 11 is the only L.A. City-controlled
district along the Santa Monica Bay, though Los Angeles County going-south past the Hyperion
Wastewater Treatment Plant in El Segundo also encompasses the beachfront Santa Monica Bay cities of
Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach and Torrance.
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Los Angeles Public Works, through the Bureau of Engineering (BOE) and Bureau of Sanitation (BOS)
controls and ostensibly maintains and extracts substantial sewer “user fees” from the cities of Santa
Monica and Malibu, and taxes from L.A. Residents, including Palisadians and Venetians on either side of
Santa Monica, for our use of the crumbling, decades-old Coastal Interceptor Sewer (CIS). The CIS runs
along Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu (collecting sewage fees), through Pacific Palisades, Santa
Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey, Playa del Rey, LAX, then finally to the Hyperion Wastewater Treatment
Plant at Dockweiler State Beach in El Segundo. It is this sewer main, ruptured in several places along its
length which is primarily responsible for the ongoing fecal coliform pollution (human crap) which
continues to result in Public Health-warning beach closures by Los Angeles County Health officials .
Here is what the believed-to-be-ongoing sewage spill in Santa Monica at Wilshire and Pacific Coast
Highway (aka Highway 1, Palisades Beach Road) looks like from a July 31, 2007 Google Earth shot.
This is the third easy-to-identify Coastal Interceptor Sewer crap spill along the four mile stretch of
highway that begins at the northwestern tip of Los Angeles County at Will Rogers State Beach and ends
with the huge dip in the eastbound I-10 under which the Coastal Interceptor Sewer lays. “Navigate LA”,
the City of Los Angeles’ poorly maintained, seldom up-to-date infrastructure website shows a two
dimensional top-down view. Plus, if one knows how to navigate this aged DOS-like site architecture,
there is a second 2D side view available which shows sewer and adjacent stormwater drain
infrastructure depths below the surface. However, since Santa Monica is not technically part of Los
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Angeles Navigate LA lacks most all detail regarding what infrastructures the City of Los Angeles has
traveling underneath the City of Santa Monica’s coastline.
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