PAYING FOR NOTHING; DESPITE FEES, FILTRATION PLANTS NOT BUILT.

Byline: Eric Moses Daily News Staff Writer

A million Los Angeles residents are drinking super-chlorinated tap water - despite paying a monthly fee to build filtration plants that the state ordered nearly seven years ago.

The plants, which won't all be operational until at least 2004, would eliminate the need to treat water with two to three times the normal amount of chlorine to kill bacteria and algae.

Since 1992, the average customer has paid about $3.24 a month for water purification projects that include filtration plants at the city's four unlined, open Santa Monica Mountains reservoirs that serve the Southwest Valley, Hollywood and the Westside.

Using extra chlorine greatly increases the levels of trihalomethanes, the chemical linked in a new study by state health officials to an increase in miscarriages and, in earlier studies, birth defects and certain types of cancer. Authorities recommend pregnant women drink water that has been boiled at least one minute.

Bob Yoshimura, director of the DWP Water Supply Division, said the dangers posed by bacteria and algae outweigh the potential problems for pregnant women, whom the study says can miscarry if they drink five or more glasses of tap water a day.

``That is the more immediate and important reason than the new findings on the miscarriages. You could make everybody in the city sick and kill a lot of people if you stop using chlorine. So it's a necessary evil at this point,'' Yoshimura said.

Water leaving the Upper and Lower Hollywood, Lower Stone Canyon and Encino reservoirs contains two to three parts per million of chlorine in the water, which dissipates the farther away it travels, Yoshimura said. In other lakes, the chlorine content is one part per million.

Despite the suspected health risks of trihalomethanes, which have been known since the 1970s, city officials have rejected proposals to use a less potent mixture of chlorine and ammonia without the filtration plants on line, and chlorine dioxide, which is more expensive and might be a carcinogen.

The four reservoirs cannot be covered because they double as flood control basins and are oddly shaped.

DWP General Manager David Freeman blamed opposition from the reservoir's neighbors for the delay in the construction of filtration plants. Resident complaints were directly responsible for the DWP missing the deadline to build the Stone Canyon plant by April 1 this year.

`Shock' treatment

Until the plants are built, the department will continue to ``shock'' treat the water - frequently contaminated by rain runoff, algae blooms and animal droppings.

``We still have to clean the water and prevent algae from forming,'' Freeman said. ``You might have to use less chlorine, but it would still be there.

``And part of the problem is people don't want to see closed reservoirs. So we're kind of between a rock and a hard place on it.''

Officials said they worked with residents to avoid potentially costly and lengthy lawsuits.

It worked well in Hollywood, where the plant will resemble a large home, and no one opposed the environmental impact report findings.

The negotiators are close to an agreement with residents near the Encino reservoir, but it was in Stone Canyon, where public outcries over the plant's location caused the delay that forced the city to miss the deadline.

Bob Jaffe, head of the 96-member Encino Estates Owners Association, was pleased the DWP worked with his group, though he opposed the plant.

``My position is that I have some doubt whether or not those rules are more politically self-serving, and I question whether or not there is in truth any health hazard by going forward with a filtration plant. It may not be needed,'' he said.

Completion by 2004

The current estimate for completion of all four treatment plants is 2004, a year after the deadline agreed upon by the city and the state.

The DWP is financing the $310 million bill with the 36-cent customer surcharge, which also pays for water recycling and reclamation projects. Officials are seeking low-interest loans from the state.

From July 1, 1996, through last December, the department collected $21.2 million for projects specifically designed to bring the open reservoirs into compliance with the state rules, said Jerry Gewe, the utility's manager of water resources.

Though more money was spent on mediation and other planning projects, Gewe was unable to provide the figures dating back to when the surcharge first appeared on bills.

Los Angeles' drinking water enters the city through aqueducts from the northern and eastern parts of the state. It is purified in a huge filtration plant, which opened in Sylmar in late 1986, and then dispersed through the system, where it sits in reservoirs until pumped to homes without being cleaned again.

In 1989, the federal government ordered states to set safe water drinking rules. California followed suit the next year, and in doing so ordered utilities to build filtration plants at reservoirs lacking drains to prevent contaminated rainwater from entering the pools.

Six of the city's reservoirs have drainage systems that prevent contaminated rainwater runoff from entering the system.

On Halloween 1991, the city received a letter ordering it to comply with the state rules at Encino, Hollywood and Stone Canyon by June 1993 or face fines and other penalties.

DWP officials then brokered the deal to extend the deadline for 10 years.

Under that agreement, signed July 20, 1993, the DWP promised to build a $100 million plant at Stone Canyon by this April, a deadline that will not be met. City officials will ask the state for an extension to 2004 at a meeting later this month in Los Angeles.

The $160 million Hollywood facility is on schedule to be in operation by Jan. 1, 2001, and a nearly $50 million Encino filter plant is slated to open on time Jan. 1, 2003.

Yoshimura, who is in charge of the water quality improvement projects for the DWP, said it is unlikely the utility will speed up construction of the plants in response to the trihalomethanes study.

But state officials argue the city took too long to respond to their took too long to respond to their initial order.

``The city should have been accelerating getting the treatment plants built before the study because the plants are not for trihalomethanes, but for potential disease-causing bacteria that affects everyone,'' said Gary Yamamoto, Los Angeles regional chief of the state's drinking water office.

A chronology of problems

Here's a chronology of the city's troubles with its unlined reservoirs in the Santa Monica Mountains:

1970s: Trihalomethanes discovered to have carcinogenic qualities; new scientific equipment invented to measure THMs in water in the parts per billion.

1974: State health officials pressure city to improve water distribution system.

November 1986: Water begins moving through the $146 million Sylmar filtration plant. Plant officially opens in April 1987.

1989: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires states to set up rules for safe drinking water at open reservoirs.

1990: The state Department of Health Services establishes its Surface Water Treatment Rules.

October 1991: The state notifies the DWP that four reservoirs fail to meet guidelines and orders city to comply by June 29, 1993.

July 1993: State and DWP officials sign a compliance agreement that gives the city an extension of deadlines to build treatment plants at Lower Stone Canyon (1998), the two Hollywood reservoirs (2001) and Encino (2003). Part of the deal requires Los Angeles to put more chlorine in drinking water flowing from those reservoirs until the filtration plants open.

February 1998: DWP officials will ask state health officials to extend deadline for Stone Canyon from April 1998 to 2004.

January 2001: Scheduled completion of $160 million Hollywood treatment plant.

January 1993: Scheduled completion of $50 million Encino plant.

2004: Anticipated completion of $100 million Stone Canyon plant.

CAPTION(S):

Photo, map, box

PHOTO (color) Unable to cover the Hollywood Reservoir, officials must build a water filtration plant to eliminate the need for high chlorine levels.

Tom Mendoza/Daily News

Map: Reservoir troubles

Tap water in these areas can taste like it's from a swimming pool because the city adds up two to three times the normal amount of chlorine to make it safe for consumption. Large amounts of chlorine must be used until treatment plants are built, possibly by 2004.

Daily News

Box: A Chronology of problems (see text)