ToporowThe current El Segundo Hyperion plant is 144 acres of glass, concrete, and pipe. It is the end of the road for sewage from over 6,000 miles of sewer system maintained by the city of Los Angeles. (NORS S-1) The Hyperion plant is the environments best and last line of defense against the over 500 million gallons of wastewater produced in the area a day. The sheer volume of this waste most of which is being released into the Santa Monica Bay must be having some impact upon the environment. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the workings of the plant and its impact upon the surrounding environment.It is best in most things to start at the beginning, so let us answer the question: Why do we have a Hyperion Plant in the first place? The site was first chosen for its favorable and remote position between the city and the ocean in 1887. There was no plant on the premises at the time but was merely the place where the outfall sewer pipe met the ocean. The Hyperion Plant as an entity does not emerge until 1922 when a primary screening plant was built on the site. (WFPU II 2) The major concern in the mind of the city and the public seems to be the quality of the beaches and not any particular concern for the life in the bay. The screening plant kept the beaches clean temporarily but eventually sewage odor, water discoloration, and grease along the beaches near the plant became a serious problem. During the Second World War the beach was so contaminated that the State Board of Health actually quarantined 10 miles of beach from Hermosa to Venice. To clean up the beaches, the city then constructed a secondary treatment plant. The secondary plant was in place by 1950 but by 1961 the boom in population forced the plant to upgrade. The upgraded plant could provide 420 million gallons a day of primary treatment and 100 million gallons of secondary treatment. These facilities kept the beaches clean but still showed little i...
