Los Angeles County Water Officials Say La Paz Plan Is Lacking in Fire Protection

• City of Malibu Planning Commission Disregards Testimony that Project Could ‘Go Up in Flames’

BY BILL KOENEKER

In a startling and potentially serious revelation, the Los Angeles County deputy counsel for Waterworks District 29 told the Malibu Planning Commission last week that the current plans for water service for the proposed La Paz commercial retail/office complex planned for the Civic Center area offer inadequate fire protection.
“We do not want to see this structure go up in flames,” said Michael Moore, the deputy county counsel, who said the water district insists the project needs off-site tank storage in the event of a rupture of the water main. Malibu’s 30-inch water main is the sole source of water supply for the Civic Center.
Another disturbing revelation was made when water district officials alleged the statements they had made about requiring off-site storage for the proposal were deleted from the project’s Environmental Impact Report and replaced with language that suggested the water district had given the OK to the current plans.
“The statement that waterworks agrees that no additional water storage is needed is not true. We are not asking the project be stopped. We are asking the planning commission to renotice the hearing to take additional testimony,” he added.
Greg Even, another waterworks official, said the water district had submitted their comments in 2003 and were attending last week’s planning commission meeting to set the record straight.
“This project is being built in a pressure zone without storage. There is no tank to provide fire protection. We want to correct the record. Our comments were deleted in the EIR. The 30-inch water main is the entire source of water for this area. If there is an interruption of the line, there will not be fire protection for this project. There have been 12 ruptures in the last 10 years. It is not unlikely the line will be ruptured. Many other areas have gravity storage, even if the power is out, there is still fire protection,” Even said.
The La Paz proposal had already come before the commission, which had previously recommended approving a smaller alternative 99,000-square-foot version instead of a larger project with a public component, or “benefit” of city hall space.
The matter was before the commission last week, because it was a consent item on their agenda for considering the findings of their recommendation to the city council, which will hear the request on March 24.
Commissioners were told by their attorney not to discuss the new information but rather to decide if they wanted to simply pass their recommendation on to the city council or if they wanted to reopen the hearing as requested by waterworks officials to take additional testimony.
Commissioner Les Moss said he was willing to send the matter to the council. “It will get a full hearing at the city council,” he said.
The other planning panelists agreed, except for Chair Regan Schaar, who had previously voted against the applications. When the commission voted 3-1, with Commissioner Carol Randall absent, to send the matter forward to the city council Schaar said, “You guys are nuts.”
Apparently the applicant and the water agency have been battling for months over the district’s position. Consultant Don Schmitz charged that the district is trying to “extort money from the developer” by making what he asserts is an “unsubstantiated” determination that there is not adequate water infrastructure to provide public fire protection.
“Notwithstanding the vitriolic nature of Schmitz’s accusations, the City of Malibu is well aware, during the past ten years, there have been 12 major leaks. Based on this historical record of leaks, the district engineer has sufficient factual basis to conclude that the fire protection water supply proposed by the developer is not 100 percent reliable. The district engineer has concluded a gravity storage tank is required for satisfactory level of water system reliability in the event of a fire,” wrote Adam Ariki, the assistant deputy director of the waterworks division of the county’s public works department, in a recent letter to the city.
Schmitz, in his own correspondence to the municipality, called the water district’s requirement of an offsite tank estimated to cost $4.5 million tantamount to an “out and out plan of extortion” condemned by the courts.
However, Schmitz indicated that the La Paz owner would voluntarily pay $750,000 to the city to hold in trust for the water district for work on a system for the Civic Center.
Schmitz counters that the scenario envisioned by the water district that a fire may occur at the same time as an earthquake, landslide or other similar natural disaster, which in turn might cause the pipeline to fail so that there would be little water available of adequate pressure to fight a fire, is an “improbable occurrence.”
The water district has indicated what is needed is a one-million-gallon water tank, a pumping station, over a mile stretch of 12-inch water main, and other improvements.
Schmitz acknowledges that the water district has an existing infrastructure that is “overall substandard,” but balked at the idea that La Paz should pay for the district’s “wish list” since the impacts of La Paz are much less than a $4.5 million price tag.
Water district officials insist they are putting everyone on notice. “In the event that La Paz is constructed prior to the construction of the required off-site water storage tank and distribution facilities, the developer and the city must acknowledge the risks of allowing the project to proceed without sufficient gravity water storage to meet the Consolidated Fire Protection District of Los Angeles County fire flow and duration requirement,” Ariki cautioned.