White Point Outfall Sewer Tunnel – Carson CA

Description

Between 1935 and 1937, a six-mile long sewer tunnel was constructed between the Los Angeles County Sanitation District’s former Joint Disposal Plant in Carson, CA, and an ocean outfall at White Point on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The project received funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA).

According to an October 1933 article in the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News: “Definite action toward construction of a main outfall sewer, generally known as the White Point outfall project, to drain the district south of Los Angeles, was taken yesterday when an application for $2,820,000 was filed with the state advisory board of the federal Public Works Administration. […] Labor on the project is expected to require work for 650 men for 12 months and 50 others for four months….”

In 1937, as the tunnel approached completion, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) supplied laborers “to assist in making the minor modifications in the plant structures to accommodate them to primary sedimentation operation” (Rawn, p. 80).

Today, this tunnel remains one of two that connect the Joint Water Pollution Control Plant—on the site of the former Joint Disposal Plant—to ocean outfalls.