Surviving an EPA SSO Consent Decree and the Lessons Learned Regarding Extending Pipeline Service Life and Reducing or Eliminating SSOs

In one of the largest sewage cases in U.S. history, the Department of Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, Santa Monica Bay keeper and a coalition of Los Angeles community groups reached a $2 billion settlement with the City of Los Angeles over years of sewage spills. This settlement was a groundbreaking effort to address all causes of sewage spills and odors in the city of Los Angeles. The terms of the settlement required a proactive approach designed to prevent problems from developing in the city's system. The City of Los Angeles was required to undertake more aggressive maintenance practices and advanced planning to identify problem sewers before they spill. With approximately 6,500 miles of sanitary sewer lines serving almost 4 million residents, the city operates the largest sewage collection system in the country, the city had experienced over 4,500 sewage spills. The City of Los Angeles Wastewater Collections Division found that Aggressive cleaning methods to remove obstructions, roots, grease, protruding service laterals, calcified grease, and mineral deposits in conjunction with the EPA CMOM Program would ensure the long-term performance of the system. Part of the backbone of the aggressive cleaning campaign was an ongoing benchmarking program to evaluate sewer cleaning tools to ensure that the sewer cleaning crews could effectively return the sewer pipes to 95% of operational capacity as part of a new Standard Operating Procedure SOP for sewer cleaning Unfortunately, the sewer tool industry was not manufacturing sewer tooling aggressive enough to clean to the new standards adopted by the City's WCSD so the vacuum was filled by the invention and in house manufacturing of innovative and ground breaking tooling by the city's skilled tradesmen. These innovative tools are still being used today. The implementation of innovative tooling, SOPs, CMOM, and aggressive cleaning teqniques led to a 93% reduction in SSO's. This attendee interactive PowerPoint presentation will combine great videos of sewer pipe and cleaning tools in action, diagrams / illustrations of pipe materials, SSO reducing cleaning techniques, and discuss what was learned from the EPA Consent Decree regarding: 1.A proactive and predictive CMOM approach to sewer maintenance by implementing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). An SOP that includes aggressive cleaning extends the service life of the entire system while reducing Sanitary Sewer Overflows (S. 2.Now, in the 21st century, the use of high-pressure hydro-jetting trucks and nozzles demand sewer pipe materials tough enough to withstand the constantly evolving societal demands and technological changes in tools and equipment. 3.the appropriate tool/ method for removal of obstructions, roots, grease, protruding service laterals, calcified grease and mineral deposits. It will also detail the variations of mechanical cleaning methods such as rodding machines, bucketing, hydro-jet methods including static vs rotating nozzles, jet angles (high clean/ low thrust; low clean/ high thrust), jet pressures, and the importance of matching tools and methods to specific pipe materials.