Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia nominated a former California
deputy attorney general for a seat on the Long Beach Board of Harbor
Commissioners on Sept. 2.
The nominee is environmental attorney Tracy Egoscue, who now
heads the Long Beach-based Egoscue Law Group. Egoscue is known for having
achieved one of the largest Clean Water Act settlements in California history –
$5 million – against the City of Los Angeles in 2004. The lawsuit, which she
filed in 1998 as head of the nonprofit environmental group Santa Monica
Baykeeper, forced the City of LA to accept responsibility for more than 3,600
spills that occurred between 1988 and 1998. The settlement required that Los
Angeles replace 488 miles of sewer lines, clean 2,800 miles of sewers annually
and increase the sewer system’s capacity.
Egoscue also previously won a $2.5 million settlement
against the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts in 2006 relating to five
years of overflows from the Sanitation Districts’ wastewater collection system between
January 2001 and September 2006.
Egoscue also previously served a stint as executive officer
of the LA region of the state’s Regional Water Quality Control Board, quit in
May 2010 after less than three years on the job.
She also currently sits on the Board of the California
League of Conservation Voters.
If confirmed, Egoscue would assume the seat on the board
formerly held by Susan Anderson Wise, who stepped down from the harbor board
July 14.
