Tapia Managers Say Recent Commission Vote Was an ‘Ambush’

• LVMWD Acknowledges that It Was Caught Off Guard by Environmental Organizations

BY HANS LAETZ

Managers at the Tapia Wastewater Treatment Plant say that a Malibu Creek cleanup project eight years in the making and endorsed by several environmental groups and water cleanup officials was “ambushed by eleventh-hour written documents filed at the last minute by two organizations purporting to be environmentalists” at a California Coastal Commission meeting.

And the scientist from Heal The Bay who testified against the proposal says she was not aware the project was cosponsored by the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, or that $200,000 in state clean water bonds had been appropriated for what had been certified by regional water pollution watchdogs as a good neighbor, water-cleansing project.

As a result, the agency is deciding whether to appeal, ask for a rehearing, or simply walk away from a water quality project that they said has no benefit for their sewage plant other than to foster wildlife and allow people using Malibu Creek to swim in water that is less brackish.

Meeting in San Francisco two weeks ago, the Coastal Commission overruled its own staff findings while acknowledging its attorney’s cautions that it could not make a water quality judgment, and by a 6-4 vote turned down a proposal to rebuild a series of water seepage pits along the creek bed eight miles upstream of Malibu Lagoon.

“We didn’t really think we were going to have to go up there [to San Francisco] and fight a battle,” said Jeff Reinhardt, public affairs manager at the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, which the Tapia facility serves.

“We sent our engineer expecting the commission to vote on a construction matter, knowing that the Coastal Commission does not have authority to hold a water quality hearing,” Reinhardt said. “We had no opportunity to address the outrageous claims and demonstrate the facts.”

Jon Mundy, the district’s general manager, said Monday the unexpected Coastal Commission veto of the project derails an effort to improve water quality in Malibu Canyon that was endorsed by the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission and other environmental groups.

In addition, the plan had been found by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board to have no possible adverse water quality ramifications, either by water level or increased flow, at Malibu Lagoon or Surfrider Beach.

Heal The Bay and the Sierra Club objected to the project because it would have been located too close to the creek, and would have added water to the combined above-ground and below-ground flow through Malibu Canyon into the lagoon, where high water levels are blamed for allowing natural and human contaminants to cook in the sunlight and become putrid.

But the Las Virgenes officials said the seepage ponds would have been closely controlled using groundwater and stream flow data downstream all the way to the ocean, and would be used only to boost stream flow in upstream areas where the creek can become brackish during summer months.

The project was estimated to cost about $250,000 and would not have aided Las Virgenes to dispose of its average of 9.5 million gallons of treated sewage effluent daily, they stressed.

“We have more than enough customers for our treated effluent during summer months,” and have backup ability to use spray-evaporation pads or divert treated water into the Los Angeles River under its current permits, Mundy said. During five winter months, when irrigation need for recycled water is low, the plant is allowed to send what is described as drinking-water-quality effluent into Malibu Creek, which usually is flowing into the ocean during the winter.

During the commission meeting in San Francisco, the Las Virgenes engineer appeared flustered and was unable to respond to several allegations made by Heal The Bay scientist Sarah Abramson, Sierra Club activist Marcia Hanscom and Malibuite Connor Everts who raised fishing-related concerns.

One commission member who voted against the project publicly complained during the meeting that he had received Heal The Bay’s multi-page statement just before the item came up, and was unable to properly digest it.

Abramson said Tuesday that her opposition statement was filed at the last minute because the Coastal Commission’s staff released its endorsement of the proposal only a week before the meeting, giving her agency scant time to review it. “We were rushed,” she said.

Abramson also said she was not aware that the proposal was solely intended as a pollution-reduction project, and was not envisioned by Tapia’s operators as a means to dispose of water that supposedly had no place else to go.

During the meeting, a commission attorney reminded the commissioners that they are specifically prohibited from making water quality decisions, which state law assigns to the Water Board. Commissioner Sara Wan was careful to preface the motion against the project by saying it was based on siting issues, that the ponds would have been too close to Malibu Creek.

Abramson repeated on Tuesday her charge that the ponds would be too close to the creek, but said Heal The Bay had not done any scientific studies to produce any evidence to counter hydrological studies done by Tapia that predict the water-cleansing project should succeed.

Mundy said the ponds were designed as wetlands for wildlife, and as such were an integral part of improvement of the creek’s currently degraded condition. The pond site is currently a field filled with invasive plants.

The Tapia officials were particularly rankled by Everts’ assertion that endangered steelhead trout suffered a massive die-off in the creek last year because of the sewage plant. “If Mister Everts has any proof of that, he owes it to the community to furnish it. There is no established connection between the plant and the trout die-off at all,” Reinhardt said.

“We partnered with several environmental organizations to make this [project] happen and clean up further the water in the creek, and we went and got a $200,000 grant from clean water fund (bonds), and now that money will go elsewhere,” Reinhardt said. “I find that sad.”