El Segundo still stinks. Why can’t L.A. fix the problem two years after huge sewage spill?

On the worst days, Tamara Kcehowski said, she has thrown up when the stench from Los Angeles’ nearby sewage plant overwhelms her El Segundo apartment. She said her dog, Maggie, has even retched alongside her.

On the not-so-bad days, she says she often deals with a dull headache or burning eyes. Some mornings, she wakes up gagging or coughing.

None of this was part of Kcehowski’s life before July 2021, when major failures at the nearby Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant dumped millions of gallons of untreated sewage into Santa Monica Bay and released high levels of hydrogen sulfide, a gas that smells like rotten eggs and can cause health issues.

At the time, Kcehowski was hopeful the facility’s response would be swift and that her community would suffer the stinky mess for only a few days — or at worst a few weeks.

But now, more than three years later, the noxious odors and elevated hydrogen sulfide emissions persist, despite repeated complaints and appeals to the city of Los Angeles, air quality regulators and local officials. Although she’s lived in El Segundo with her daughter since the early 2000s, she now wonders if her only recourse is to move.

“You’ve had three years to take care of this issue, and you still haven’t,” said Kcehowski, 58. “We’re still suffering, why?”

Hyperion — the largest wastewater treatment facility west of the Rockies — sprawls across 200 acres of oceanfront Los Angeles and sits just outside the city limits of El Segundo. Every day, 4 million inhabitants of L.A. and 29 other cities — including El Segundo — flush a quarter-billion gallons of wastewater into Hyperion’s treatment tanks.

While most people are blissfully ignorant of their wastewater’s journey after showering or using the toilet, it’s become an unpleasant fact of life for many El Segundo residents. Many complain the city of Los Angeles has ignored their plight and has failed to make needed changes to limit, and track, odors. They worry their concerns will always be outweighed by the sanitation needs of millions.

“There’s no question it’s worse than it ever has been, at least going back to the early ’90s when it was really bad,” said El Segundo Mayor Drew Boyles. “It’s incredibly frustrating. … It doesn’t feel like the city of L.A. is taking this matter as seriously as they should.”

For its part, the facility has slowly addressed a laundry list of needed improvements in the aftermath of the July 2021 spill, some of which have dramatically improved odors.

“It’s services cannot be stopped, diverted or stored,” said Tonya Shelton, a spokesperson for L.A. Sanitation and Environment, the city department that manages the sewage plant. “Hyperion will nonetheless continue to work closely with both the [South Coast Air Quality Management District] and the City of El Segundo to ensure that operations are not only compliant, but reflect a spirit of partnership for the surrounding community.”

Odor complaints still up

In the three years before the July 2021 spill, residents complained fewer than 150 times about odors around Hyperion.

But in the three months after the spill — which officials found was likely caused by equipment failures, operational missteps and staffing issues — more than 2,500 odor complaints flooded regulators, according to South Coast AQMD data. Although community concern peaked in those initial months, Hyperion continues to be barraged by odor complaints, which routinely reach into the hundreds each month.

The alarming uptick in complaints led to increased oversight by the local air district beginning in 2022, when regulators determined L.A. Sanitation was “unable to contain the sewage odors at Hyperion and cannot conduct operations at the wastewater treatment plant without being in violation” of district rules and regulations.

An abatement order required the plant to improve infrastructure, operations and monitoring. It was aimed at minimizing smells primarily from hydrogen sulfide, a known byproduct of wastewater treatment facilities released during the breakdown of organic matter. It can be deadly at high levels, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, but both lower and longer-term exposure can also cause health symptoms, particularly for the respiratory and nervous systems.

After more than two years under the order, L.A. Sanitation and AQMD officials reported last month that Hyperion had successfully met all the mandated conditions — but members of the air quality hearing board were not convinced the problem had been resolved.

“Everything that is being done is not getting rid of the odors,” Cynthia Verdugo-Peralta, a board member, said at the late November hearing. “The problem still remains — the odors are still affecting the public in such a negative way. … The city of El Segundo, especially, is still suffering.”

At that hearing, a South Coast AQMD air quality inspector testified that there were no remaining shortcomings related to the abatement order. However, he said that during his recent visits to El Segundo there “are pockets that I can consistently detect odors in the community.”

The board members voted unanimously to extend oversight of Hyperion through at least next August, instead of terminating the abatement order in January.

Boyles said he was in “disbelief” that the board even considered lifting the abatement order, but was glad it stood by his city’s concerns.

Still, he and the El Segundo City Council are considering filing a lawsuit against the city of L.A. It’s something Boyles considers a last resort, but the city has taken that route in the past when conditions around the sewage plant have deteriorated.

El Segundo Mayor Drew Boyles and City Manager Darrell George, from left, are photographed near the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Two groups of residents have already filed suit against L.A.’s sanitation department over air quality issues immediately after the spill, one specifically alleging the city’s failure to monitor noxious gases. Those cases remain in litigation.

After the spill, Hyperion officials admitted that there were several shortcomings and repairs were needed. L.A. has since spent an estimated $114 million on improvements, including placing new covers on a tank that AQMD officials found to be a principal source of odors, Shelton said. The plant has also enhanced employee training, implemented an air monitoring system along its perimeter, increased neighborhood checks for odors and, most recently, hired environmental nonprofit Heal the Bay to improve community relations.

An external review of the plant after the spill called for 33 immediate fixes, of which about 85% have been completed, the city has reported.

But Shelton emphasized that an odor-free plant handling millions of gallons of sewage a day is not realistic.

“Despite the completion of these projects, and though Hyperion continues to put concentrated effort into minimizing odors, odors are a part of work at any wastewater treatment plant, and the presence of odors does not always mean there is a problem to remedy or changes to implement,” Shelton said in a statement. “Hyperion continues to work with the community on this issue.”

Air quality compliance issues

For decades, a single air quality violation in a year was rare for Hyperion. But since the 2021 sewage spill, Hyperion has seen a surge in compliance issues. In just the last six months, the South Coast AQMD has issued the facility eight such nuisance violations, which indicate a discharge of air contaminants causing odors traced back to Hyperion, according to recent inspector testimony.

Officials have also issued some violations tied to hydrogen sulfide emissions.

While Hyperion historically tested for the colorless toxic gas in certain scenarios, it was only in May 2022 — after months of complaints and violations — that Hyperion began consistently monitoring for hydrogen sulfide along its eastern border with El Segundo neighborhoods.

Since then, there have been several occasions when levels of the compound have spiked above 30 parts per billion on average for an hour — California’s standard for acute risk from hydrogen sulfide. Such high levels were recorded three times in 2022, four times in 2023 and once in February of this year, Shelton said.

In one instance from June 2023, hydrogen sulfide reached a one-hour average of 64 ppb — more than double California’s standard — when Hyperion operators had turned off pollution control devices, or scrubbers, for maintenance. Shelton noted that during several of the other spikes, there were issues at the plant or heightened winds that likely influenced the hydrogen sulfide measurements, but some were unexplained. However, Shelton noted that “Hyperion is consistently well below” the 30 ppb level.

In recent months, the monitors have regularly recorded the gas at much lower levels, around 1 to 3 ppb, though spikes have occurred. The state of California considers a long-term average of 7 ppb, across several months, to be dangerous.

Officials have found that people can detect hydrogen sulfide at levels from 0.05 ppb to 30 ppb, though it’s not exactly clear the levels at which symptoms occur, and this likely varies by person. Research on the effects of chronic or low-level exposure remains limited.

The Los Angeles County Public Health Department in 2022 reported that “odors alone from hydrogen sulfide cause well-documented physiological responses, including nausea, vomiting, headache, dizziness and other symptoms.” Some studies have also found that experiences with odor can alter sensitivities, as well as increase stress.

For those residents who say they smell the gas regularly, chronic exposure is a worry.

“I’m concerned with a 1 [ppb] every single day for 365 days a year,” Kcehowski said. “What is this doing for us for this length of time?”

Tamara Kcehowski walks through her El Segundo neighborhood, which has been dealing with foul odors from the nearby Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Funding an unglamorous job

Hyperion has been in operation since 1925, and underwent its last major upgrade in the 1990s. Since that time, it has been instrumental in transforming Los Angeles County beaches from a potential health hazard to a worldwide tourist destination.

But even with such an important — albeit unglamorous — role in keeping Santa Monica Bay clean for humans and sealife, accessing the necessary funds for Hyperion’s upkeep has been a challenge, said Elsa Devienne, author of the book “Sand Rush,” which chronicles the history of L.A.’s coast.

“Nobody wants to think about sewage, nobody wants to spend a cent on it,” Devienne said. “So investment in those things only happened when things get really, really bad.”

Many times, state or federal oversight — often in the form of lawsuits — has been the only surefire way to enact necessary change at the plant, Devienne said.

That history again played out this year. A settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency required L.A. to invest $20 million into improvements at the plant. But notably, that deal focused only on water quality issues — not emissions or air quality.

There is, however, some funding on the horizon: for the first time in years, the Los Angeles City Council approved a sewer fee rate hike, which is expected to generate nearly $115 million in additional funds for L.A. Sanitation in its first fiscal year. By 2028, the increases are expected to more than double a typical single-family home’s bimonthly sewer fee, from $72.27 to $155.55, estimates show.

“The project lists are long, but they have been working really hard lifting up the odor control projects, to support the city [of El Segundo] to be better neighbors,” said Meredith McCarthy, senior director of community outreach for Heal the Bay.

The last few months of improvements have addressed the most urgent issues and what McCarthy called low-hanging fruit, but she said the facility’s maintenance backlog remains “pretty spectacular” and continued investment is needed, especially if Hyperion is going to play its important role in the city’s aggressive shift to recycled water over the next decade.

‘No change, wasted effort’

While McCarthy is hopeful the plant is now on the right path, she knows it doesn’t change the last few years of suffering felt by many El Segundo residents.

Although overall complaints have decreased, Boyles insists that its not because foul odors are no longer an issue.

“Our residents are so fatigued by this matter,” Boyles said. “People are getting worn down. … We cannot give up on them.”

Chuck Espinoza, who lives not far from the plant, is among those who have given up. He was submitting odor complaints most days of the month soon after the spill, when he and his family for the first time started suffering from headaches and burning eyes. But the multi-step complaint process eventually felt like a pointless time-suck.

“No change, wasted effort and it’s all for nothing,” Espinoza, 51, said. “Giving up for me has been the best thing for my sanity.”

Before the spill, he estimated that his neighborhood smelled funky once a week. But after July 2021 it’s been at least three to four times a week, he said, and he described the recent odors as more chemical.

“I don’t think we even know what we’re being exposed to,” Espinoza said. He said he worries about long-term effects, including for his children, but he said he feels “completely powerless to even address what those are.”

But for some residents, Hyperion hasn’t changed much about life in the industry-surrounded city.

Chuck Nicolai, who lives only a few houses from Espinoza, said he and his wife haven’t noticed any dramatic changes or issues since the spill. When he bought his house in the mid-1980s, Nicolai remembers a horrible smell from the plant. But since it modernized in the 1990s, he said he can’t complain.

He considers it a part of life in El Segundo, similar to dealing with fumes from the nearby Chevron plant or the constant noise from the airport.

“It’s SoCal coastal, the best climate in the world,” Nicolai, 79, said. “You live here, you get used to the jets and Hyperion.”