EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — A 17 million-gallon sewage spill at Los Angeles’ largest treatment plant forced the closure Monday of beaches from El Segundo to the southern end of Playa del Rey, multiple media outlets reported.
The leak has been attributed to an overnight system failure that overwhelmed the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant, forcing workers to discharge the untreated sewage into the Santa Monica Bay, KABC reported.
Statement regarding Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant discharge today. pic.twitter.com/SY5L8gC0vK
— LA Sanitation & Environment ♻️💧🌳 (@LACitySAN) July 13, 2021
L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn confirmed in a tweet that a Sunday night power outage caused untreated sewage from the Hyperion facility in Playa del Rey to spill.
Specifically, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health declared Dockweiler State Beach, El Segundo Beach and the Grand Avenue storm drain unsafe to swimmers, KTLA reported.
“Water samples are being tested and I’m getting more information about the scope of the problem,” Hahn tweeted.
Officials also confirmed to KTLA that the unfiltered sewage was discharged into the ocean through a pair of pipes that extent one and five miles offshore.
The facility “became inundated with overwhelming quantities of debris, causing backup of the headworks facilities,” Hyperion Executive Plant Manager Timeyin Dafeta said in a statement to The Associated Press.
“The plant’s relief system was triggered, and sewage flows were controlled through use of the plant’s one-mile outfall and discharge of untreated sewage into Santa Monica Bay,” Dafeta stated.
Los Angeles’ largest untreated sewage spill occurred in 1998, when El Niño-fueled storms resulted in the spillage of more than 30 million gallons, KTLA reported.
In operation since 1894, the Hyperion plant is both the metro’s oldest and largest sewage treatment facility, with an average of 275 million gallons of wastewater flowing into the facility on any given dry-weather day, the TV station reported.
The 17 million gallons of sewage spilled overnight represent roughly 6% of the treatment plant’s daily load, Dafeta told KABC.
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