Council OKs Controls to Slow Growth by 30% : Limit on Building Permits, Plus Earlier Measure to Save Water, Aimed at Easing Sewer Burden

In another major concession to the problem of too many people and too much sewage, the Los Angeles City Council agreed Tuesday to growth controls requested by Mayor Tom Bradley that will slow the construction boom in the city by up to 30% for at least the next three years.

Both the new restrictions and a mandatory water conservation measure enacted last week are designed to halt a surge in new flow into the Los Angeles sewer system, which threatens to reach capacity and cause new pollution in Santa Monica Bay in two years if nothing is done.

Process Involved

The law approved Tuesday, on a 12-1 council vote, tries to relieve the sewers by slowing the pace at which new construction projects are checked and awarded building permits by the City Hall bureaucracy. The measure delays developers who want to build in Los Angeles but does not alter any zoning or otherwise change the city’s long-term position on growth.

In fact, leaders of the City Council and aides to Bradley--who was in Australia on Tuesday on a trade mission with other city officials--emphasized that the law is a temporary response to a crisis, not a deliberate rethinking of the city government’s favorable leaning toward growth.

“This city, just like everybody else, has realized you have to live within your means,” said Deputy Mayor Mike Gage, a former assemblyman whose legislative acumen was needed often in recent weeks to win over a reluctant City Council. “We’re not shutting down the city, we’re not saying no more development. . . . We’re acting before we have a real crisis.”

It took the council nearly six months to finally accept Bradley’s message that the growth controls, no matter how painful, could not be avoided. But even after Tuesday’s vote, a number of other growth issues remain very much alive and potentially threatening to the mayor and council members.

Polls have found growing dissatisfaction in the city over traffic and air pollution, and the city is already under a federal court order to spend at least $2.3 billion on a thorough modernization of the sewer system.

The backbone of the system, the Hyperion sewage treatment plant near Playa del Rey, is more than 35 years old and needs major renovation. In addition, the sewer trunk lines in older sections of the city have to be dug up and replaced, a gargantuan effort that could cause significant disruption around the city.

In order to help pay for all the sewer work, the sewer service charge that Los Angeles residents now pay on their water bills will rise from an average of $6.14 now to more than $16 in 1998, when renovation of the Hyperion plant is supposed to be completed.

Besides the sewers, Los Angeles officials are also facing a crisis over where to dispose of the garbage generated by the 3.1 million residents. Stymied so far in efforts to open new mountain landfills away from residential areas, the city is thinking of paying entrepreneurs to take the garbage away by rail and bury it in the distant California deserts.

Stopgap Measure

The law passed Tuesday is itself only a stopgap measure, Bradley aides admit, that will remain in effect for nine months. By the time it expires, an environmental impact report must be prepared and the City Council will have to debate all over again on a more permanent measure or else the growth controls will lapse.

The new law requires builders and developers within the city to line up for permits to hook into the Los Angeles sewer system, and reserves 65% of the sewage allotment for new houses, apartments and condominiums. Without a sewer connection, most construction projects--hotels, offices, homes, even stores--would prove impossible to build.

In the bartering between Bradley and the council in the last month, a number of major construction projects were exempted, including the Library Square and Pershing Square Center developments downtown and future construction planned on the site of the Church of the Open Door on Hope Street downtown.

The council also waived the growth-control limits for office buildings that Los Angeles County officials want to build on 1st Street downtown, for new development in the El Pueblo historic area around Olvera Street and at the Pan Pacific Auditorium in the Beverly-Fairfax area, and for key projects in the city’s North Hollywood redevelopment area.

Also, any project where the builder had filed a complete set of plans with the city by April 19 was also made exempt from the law, along with developments that avoid a net increase in sewage flow by installing water-saving devices that reduce the waste generated in an existing building somewhere in the city.

Growth Allowance

Otherwise, construction within the city in a single year will be allowed to add only 5 million gallons to the average daily sewage flow. The 5-million-gallon allocation will be calculated monthly and, once the monthly ration of sewage capacity is claimed, no more building permits will be issued until the next month, city officials said.

In recent years the average daily sewage flow has grown by 10 million gallons every year, to the current level of 440 million gallons a day. City officials say the effective capacity is 460 million gallons a day and that any higher flow could force operators of the Hyperion plant to release inadequately treated effluent into Santa Monica Bay.

Special priority was given to projects that include low-income housing or homeless shelters, for builders of a lone house and to property owners now on septic systems who wish to hook into the city sewers.

Over the objections of Bradley’s staff, the City Council also gave itself the power, on a two-thirds vote, to exempt any project that will “benefit the public health, safety or otherwise provide a public benefit.”

The council also reserved for itself--again over Bradley’s objections--the power to stiffen the controls and further reduce the amount of building allowed if the sewage flow continues to rise precipitously.

The mayor had wanted to give that power to the Board of Public Works, which Bradley appoints, in case a new surge in sewage flow made rapid action necessary. But Gage said Tuesday that the mayor is satisfied that council will act as needed if the crisis worsens.

Contract Cities

A second law, which was amended Tuesday and held over a week for final passage, will impose the same restriction on developers who wish to build in any of the 27 smaller cities and agencies that pay Los Angeles to dispose of their sewage. The cities served by the Los Angeles sewers include Glendale, Santa Monica, Burbank, Beverly Hills, Culver City, El Segundo and San Fernando. The other agencies are county sanitation districts adjacent to Los Angeles.

Los Angeles officials have calculated that, with the restrictions in place, the independent cities will increase the daily flow by only a million gallons every year. Another million gallons a day every year has been reserved to handle the increased sewage that officials expect to be generated as more children are born and more workers are crowded into existing offices and plants.

City officials say the growth controls will probably not be needed beyond the middle of 1992, the date they predict that expansion work will be finished at the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys. The Tillman expansion is expected to relieve the need for new sewage capacity until the end of the century.

But trying to estimate the sewage to be generated by a new construction project is an inexact art, city officials admit, and the mayor is counting on the mandatory water conservation measure he signed last week to provide some cushion.

The water measure orders the installation of low-flow shower heads and devices that reduce the amount of water wasted by each flush of the toilet in every building in the city. Bradley’s goal is to reduce the use of water by 10% in five years.

Even a 5% cut in water use would greatly increase the capacity in the sewer system, however, since sewage is mostly water. Even modest success for the water conservation program would virtually eliminate the need to control growth for sewage purposes.