Each year, sewage spills close our beautiful beaches. Unfortunately, this year has already proven to be no exception, with a raw sewage spill of 5 million gallons contaminating our shores just a month into the new year. 

This spill is another example of a long history of wastewater infrastructure failures that endanger public health, inflict economic damage and harm the environment.

In 2023, at least 318,000 gallons of sewage spilled into the LA River and made its way to our coast. An analysis by the Daily Breeze in 2022 found that sewage spills resulted in an alarming 42 million gallons of wastewater entering L.A. waterways over the previous 15 years, with the majority attributable to preventable infrastructure failure. In one instance in late 2021, a 60-year-old sewer pipe collapsed after heavy rain, dumping more than 8 million gallons of raw sewage into the ocean and closing all the beaches in Long Beach.

With the frequency and severity of extreme weather events increasing due to climate change, the consequences of L.A. County’s underequipped sewage system will also rise. Investment in our wastewater infrastructure is urgently needed to safeguard our beaches and improve our wastewater infrastructure’s resiliency.

With the frequency and severity of extreme weather events increasing due to climate change, the consequences of L.A. County’s underequipped sewage system will also rise.

President Biden’s Infrastructure and Jobs Act allocated more than $11 billion to the EPA’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which should be used to fund wastewater treatment infrastructure. That money could make a real difference for Long Beach, creating new jobs in L.A. County for vital functions such as inspections and maintenance on our sewer system and replacing aging pipes. 

But as far as we can tell, L.A. County hasn’t seen a dime.

Unfortunately, there are serious deficiencies in the government’s tracking of how these funds are used. The public data on federal government spending, available at USAspending.gov, is often inaccurate or does not provide enough information to understand where taxpayer money is going and how it is spent.

For example, in the case of the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, money is awarded to state agencies that then distribute it to localities to fund specific projects.

Often, however, no information is available on USAspending.gov about which localities received money from the state agency. New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, for instance, listed no sub-awards for a $432 million State Revolving Fund grant, as the nonpartisan Project On Government Oversight has revealed. When sub-awards are listed, descriptions of the projects funded are frequently vague, and there is no way to tell how the localities spent the money or which contractors received it.

This black box around federal spending should concern taxpayers across the nation, especially Long Beach residents. Transparent disclosure of how taxpayer dollars are spent is essential to building trust between citizens and government. Good reporting helps ensure that federal funds – our tax dollars – are equitably distributed to the places that need it most, like L.A. County’s sewer system, rather than to the places with the most political clout.

Furthermore, better award descriptions and reporting on which contractors receive the funds would help small businesses identify opportunities to compete for contracts, helping local businesses and ensuring competition so that taxpayers get the best bang for our buck.

Robert Garcia, Long Beach’s former mayor, now represents Long Beach in Congress. I urge Rep. Garcia and other members of California’s delegation to not only help secure federal funds for aging wastewater infrastructure in the area, but to advocate for legislation that will bring more transparency to federal spending by improving the reporting requirements. The public deserves to know if and how federal dollars are being used to address this critical infrastructure issue.

Giselle Carrillo is the founder of Courage Camps, a nonprofit that teaches diverse children of Los Angeles County who have never experienced the ocean how to surf.