Clear days after the rain early this month brought folks in El Segundo outdoors, the city’s mayor said at a recent City Council meeting, but the air smelled bad.
And residents say it still does.
That’s because the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant was remedying some damage caused by those recent storms at the facility. The odor though, mostly caused by hydrogen sulfide, is something that the community has dealt with since a massive sewage spill three years ago at the plant.
Heavy rain on Feb. 4 and 5 caused an overflow of about 1 billion gallons of water into Hyperion, which overwhelmed the facility’s pumping system, El Segundo officials reported at the Feb. 6 council meeting. Hyperion is meant to handle a maximum of 800 million gallons.
The storm caused a power outage in the truck-loading facility, which affected some of the equipment, said Tonya Shelton, spokesperson for Los Angeles Sanitation and Environment, the agency that oversees Hyperion. Repairs were completed Feb. 17, however, and Hyperion crews performed pre-storm assessments to prepare for this week’s rain.
Shelton said that intermittent, increased odors are emitting from the plant due to the rain damage and a slowdown of the water treatment process, from the primary tanks to the secondary clarifiers. Los Angeles Sanitation and Environment, the agency that runs Hyperion, expects the smells to subside in a week or two following the repairs, she added.
To immediately relieve the site, though, Hyperion on Feb. 5 discharged treated water through its 1-mile outfall pipeline for 45 minutes, city officials said, the maximum time allowed under the plant’s operating permit.
The 1-mile outfall gates are otherwise used monthly as required by the permit for preventative maintenance, Shelton added.
Hyperion had to use that 1-mile outfall, too, when it discharged 17 million gallons of raw sewage into the ocean in July 2021. During that incident, the plant became backed up and flooded with raw…
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