Major Raw Sewage Spill Grows As Storm Continues

Monday’s pair of sewage spills that have shut down the Cabrillo Beach ocean waters in San Pedro, and all swimming areas in Long Beach, may be millions of gallons worse than originally expected.

Officials first announced that more than 5 million gallons of untreated sewage had leaked into the Dominguez Channel, the Compton Creek, and in the city of Commerce. But on Tuesday, Bryan Langpap, the public information officer for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, told LAist the spill may actually have been 8 million gallons.

The storm is to blame, he said.

“It's not a collapse, it's not a lack of maintenance,” Langpap said. "It's just there's so much rain.”

What happened

Langpap said that when we get a lot of intense wet weather, as the region has experienced for the past few days, the water builds up on the streets and leaks into the sewers.

That fills up the sewer, which will eventually overflow from a manhole.

Langpap said that’s what happened with the spill into the Dominguez Channel, which leads to the Port of Long Beach, and into the Compton Creek, and eventually to the L.A. River. He added that the rain also caused the second, roughly 40,000-gallon spill in Commerce, which also flows into the L.A. River.

Langpap noted that they never want to see a spill, but it’s a “massive system” with 1,400 miles of sewers operated by the county, with another 10,000 miles of sewers that connect it to the cities they support.

He said they’re going to be working with those partner cities to figure out how to prevent major spills from happening, but it’s not a day-to-day problem, and light rain wouldn’t have had the same effect.

“This is a problem where we just had so much water piling up in the streets and then that gets into the sewers,” Langpap said.

What’s next

Once the storm starts to pass, sanitation crews will take daily water samples at rivers, on the harbor, and along the beaches to keep an eye on the bacteria levels.

“We want to make sure that we get at least two straight days where the bacteria levels are down to where they need to be to meet state standards,” Langpap said.

They’ll share that data with the L.A. County Department of Public Health, which then decides when it’s safe to reopen the ocean waters and beaches.

The sewage spills are in addition to the rain advisory for all L.A. County beaches, and Long Beach’s 7 miles of public coast.

L.A.’s advisory is in effect until at least 1 a.m. Wednesday. But the public health officials recommend beach users avoid contact with ocean water for a period of at least three days after significant rainfall, especially near flowing storm drains, creeks and rivers.

“Even when there's not a sewage spill, there's just so much urban contamination that gets kind of flushed down to the ocean, and it raises the bacteria levels and makes it not safe for swimming or surfing,” Langpap said.