By Kevin Herrera
Daily Press Staff Writer

SM PIER A pumping station at Moss Avenue failed Sunday night, causing city officials to divert an estimated 25,000 to 55,000 gallons of raw sewage into a storm drain that empties in the vicinity of the bike path beneath the Santa Monica Pier.

City officials said the sewage did not make its way into the ocean and was cleaned up Monday morning.

That didn’t stop Heal the Bay, an environmental watchdog based in Santa Monica, from issuing a statement Tuesday criticizing City Hall and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health for not closing the beach or notifying the public.

Exposure to high concentrations of fecal bacteria can cause swimmers to become sick, contracting diseases like typhoid fever or hepatitis A, or lesser side effects like diarrhea.

“We feel the beach should have been closed, just as a precautionary measure, until we could conduct tests to determine if the water was safe,” said Mike Grimmer, an environmental data analyst with Heal the Bay, who conducted tests Monday morning that found two pools of sewage to have high levels of enterococcus bacteria.

Grimmer, who happened to spot the pools while at the Heal the Bay Aquarium Monday morning, said the samples were taken at the high tide line, meaning some of the sewage could have made its way into the water.

“We aren’t talking about a little spill here,” Grimmer said. “This was 25,000 to 50,000 gallons.”

Heal the Bay and other environmental groups have been fighting for better notification of the public when a sewage spill occurs. A state law was recently passed that requires cities or other agencies to report a spill “as soon as possible” to the health department, whereas in the past, agencies had 24 hours to spread the word.

Dean Kubani, who is in charge of City Hall’s Environmental Programs, said county health officials were notified by 8 a.m. Monday, roughly nine hours after the pump failure occurred. The failure appears to have been caused by a temporary power outage at the pumping station. When power was restored, the pumps did not restart because of a problem with the computer system. Staff had to be called out to fix the problem.

The pumps were brought back online around 5:30 a.m., Kubani said.

“Heal the Bay is under the false impression that the regional board was not notified, however, the city’s water resources office sent a notification at 8 a.m. that morning to the California Office of Emergency Services, the Department of Public Health and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board,” Kubani said.

“It was basically a mechanical failure and the crew out there did a great job averting a potentially larger problem,” Kubani added. “They got it cleaned up quickly and it’s fixed. The bike path is as far west as it got.”

Kubani said there was no need to close the beach, as the sewage was vacuumed up and the area sanitized.

There have been 10 sewage spills since April, none of which resulted in any action because the discharge did not reach the ocean, according to the Department of Public Health.

kevinh@smdp.com