CITY, MTA WILL CO-FUND STORM DRAIN.

Byline: Lisa Mascaro Staff Writer

The city and MTA will split the cost of installing a $1.3 million storm drain along the Orange Line route - a pipeline that had been on some city records for decades but never actually got built.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority needs the drain between Tyrone and Hazeltine avenues to prevent flooding across the busway and an adjacent bike path.

Despite complaints from some MTA board members that Los Angeles should bear the entire cost since the storm-water system is city-owned, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said the 50-50 split would help move the project forward quickly.

``It's a compromise,'' Yaroslavsky, also an MTA board member, said at Thursday's board meeting. ``There's no question they're in error. But that doesn't change the situation we face now.''

Today, crews will shut down some traffic lanes at Hazeltine and Bessemer Street to install the 60-inch pipeline.

Officials expect it will help solve the flooding problems that result whenever the area gets heavy rain.

The original storm drain supposed to be installed as part of a street improvement project that was proposed in the 1970s but never got built. However, the pipeline was erroneously shown as a completed project on a computerized version of the city's drainage maps.

As a result, officials realized the pipeline was missing only when the busway was in the final stages of design.

City property owners have been taxed since the 1990s in what amounts to $28 million annually for storm-water drains after the city entered a consent decree over federal Clean Water Act compliance.

The city will pay for its share out of its $10 million budget to build the bikeway that runs adjacent to the busway across the Valley.

Lisa Mascaro, [phone]

lisa.mascaro(at)dailynews.com

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