Rail Project to Stop Releasing Ground Water

Builders of the $2.4-billion Alameda Corridor, who are accused of violating clean water standards for the Los Angeles River Basin, announced Friday that they will stop releasing ground water at its construction sites, a move that threatens to delay work and cost the project up to $500,000 a day.

Corridor officials said they will stop discharging ground water at El Segundo and Greenleaf boulevards in Compton, where the project is relocating a Metropolitan Water District pipeline. Records show that in three tests the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority violated the conditions of permits to discharge water into Compton Creek, a tributary of the heavily polluted Los Angeles River.

The decision came after the state Regional Water Quality Control Board failed to issue an order Thursday night that would have allowed the corridor agency to exceed water quality limits for the pipeline project until February.

After hearing sometimes heated testimony from environmentalists and corridor proponents, water board members could not agree whether to relax standards for the corridor and postponed the issue to Dec. 20. At that time, the board will consider a new discharge permit for all construction-related ground water and runoff from the huge rail project.

That delay, however, put the corridor agency in a bind.

“We had our own legal counsel tell us that the water board’s inability to act has placed us into technical noncompliance with the standards,” said James C. Hankla, the corridor agency’s chief executive officer. “We are not polluters, and we do not wish to be treated like polluters. If you put a glass of this water in front of me, I would drink it.”

To complete the corridor, the authority must get permission to remove up to 18 million gallons of ground water and runoff per day from construction sites over the next 1 1/2 years. The work is fraught with potential pitfalls because the project’s path moves through miles of contaminated land in the county’s old industrial core. So sensitive are the issues and competing interests--environmental concerns on one side, economic development on the other--that Gov. Gray Davis has taken a personal interest in the debate.

According to the corridor agency, the discharge will be halted at least until the water board can resolve the issue at its Dec. 20 meeting. Meanwhile, Hankla said, the agency will reevaluate its ground water discharge program to make sure county waterways are not harmed.

Although some work will proceed, the delay could cost the corridor authority up to $500,000 a day, Hankla said. He added that if the suspension continues much beyond Dec. 20, “the impacts could be profound” because the construction sequence could be disrupted.

The project--essentially a 20-mile toll road for trains--is now headed into its most critical and expensive phase, the building of a 10-mile concrete trench along Alameda Street that will contain two sets of railroad tracks.

The corridor agency wants to finish all rail work by April 2002 so it can begin paying the interest on more than $1 billion in revenue bonds it sold to finance the project. Delays could interfere with the payment schedule and force the county’s ports to bear more of the debt service.

The decision to halt the discharge came as good news to environmental groups concerned about the release of potentially contaminated ground water into some of the county’s most polluted waterways. They have threatened to sue the water board and the corridor agency.

“This looks like they are finally following the permit requirements,” said Mark Gold, executive director of Heal the Bay in Santa Monica. “The board was put into a lose-lose situation on this one. Whatever they did was either not good for the environment or not good for the corridor.”

Environmentalists have questioned the validity of the El Segundo-Greenleaf permits, which were issued although regulators had indications that samples of ground water along the corridor’s route exceeded quality limits. Under the circumstances, they say, the corridor agency did not meet the qualifications for the type of permits granted.

Dennis A. Dickerson, the water board’s executive officer, issued general permits to the corridor authority, which do not require public hearings and board approval--a process that can take months.

“This is the most blatant violation of the law I have seen,” David Beckman, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told board members Thursday evening. “The process was manipulated to serve the project,”

Dickerson defended himself at the hearing, saying the corridor was not going to violate the objectives of the Los Angeles River Basin Plan because the impact of the discharge would not be significant.

“I have been accused of using underhanded tactics,” he said. “But an illegal discharge permit was not issued.”

About a third of all goods carried by ship to and from the United States moves through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the largest harbor complex in the nation. The volume is expected to at least double in the next 20 years.

To handle the predicted growth, the county’s ports, which are running out of space and handling ever larger freighters, must move cargo faster--something the corridor will allow them to do.

Corridor officials also said the project will have significant benefits for the environment by removing contaminated soil and water along the route as well as reducing traffic congestion and related air pollution.

“We are cleaning up the environment and doing it for free,” said Tim Buresh, the corridor’s director of construction. “We will be improving life for those living along the century-old right of way.”