A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday against the Port of Los Angeles alleges that the port is polluting Los Angeles Harbor.
The suit, brought by nonprofit Environment California, accuses the port of violating national permit limits on discharges of enterococci bacteria, fecal coliform bacteria, total coliform bacteria, copper and petroleum hydrocarbons. The port is violating the federal Clean Water Act, according to the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
The port’s pump station allegedly discharges the polluted water into the Cerritos Channel of the
Los Angeles/Long Beach Inner Harbor, which is part of San Pedro Bay, a popular area for public recreation. Environment California says the port has illegally discharged pollutants more than 2,000 times over the past five years.
“As it relates to the Port of Los Angeles, the allegations in the lawsuit involve a pump station that discharges groundwater and stormwater in order to keep the roadway at a railway underpass located on Terminal Island dry,” a port spokesperson told FreightWaves.
The port has been working to address issues at the pump station and has spent $2.5 million over the past decade on improvements, with plans to spend $2.6 million over the next three years, the spokesperson said.
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The area in question is a 53-acre part of the port where the on-site treatment station is located. The port has paid $3,000 per violation, the nonprofit said in an announcement about the suit.
“This is a classic case of ‘pay-to-pollute,’ where the Port habitually violates its Clean Water Act permit, pays a slap-on-the-wrist-penalty, and then, undeterred, just goes right on polluting,” Laura Deehan, Environment California’s state director, said in the announcement.
The port, a city department, is the busiest container port in North America. The port handled about 4.1 million exports and 8.6 million twenty-foot equivalent units last year.
The city of Los Angeles and the board of harbor commissioners are also named in the suit.