as well as creating problems with water recycling efforts.
As a result, West Basin crews have used millions of gallons of drinking water each day since July 15 — enough to supply about 4,000 average households for a year — to blend with recycled water, according to interviews with top officials from the agency.After spilling 17 million gallons of sewage into Santa Monica Bay, the damaged Hyperion Reclamation plant is still struggling to clean wastewater.
The latest figures for wastewater discharge show that the plant was meeting its permit requirements for solids that settle at the bottom of the water. However, the most recent average weekly level for solids suspended in the water, posted Saturday, was still more than four times above the allowable limit, according to the records on the Hyperion website.The Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant suffered a damaging flood of raw sewage last month.
Last year at this time, an average of three to four dump trucks a day hauled away solids removed from the wastewater at the West Basin recycling plant. Currently, six truckloads a day are taking away solids, even though crews are recycling about one-third the amount of Hyperion wastewater, according to officials with West Basin.The complications, he said, have resulted in the West Basin district repeatedly violating its permit level for turbidity since July 30.
The breakdown resulted in sewage flooding about half of the plant, which sits on about 145 acres in Playa del Rey across from Dockweiler Beach.Crews scrambled for their lives as the sewage water overran the building housing the bar screens and flooded other buildings, including a two-story pumping structure that filled with sewage water.