Tension Evident at H2O Symposium

• City and Regional Water Board Engage in PR Battle

BY BILL KOENEKER

The City of Malibu’s Water Quality Symposium held last week at Pepperdine University was supposed to be the municipality’s counteroffensive to the shaky relationship between Malibu and the staff and members of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.
However, the LA-RWQCB may have gotten the upper hand in the public relations battle when it released a lengthy list of Malibu commercial Notices of Violation and missing permit directives to the media the week before the conference.
That impression was reinforced when LA-RWQCB Senior Water Resources Control Engineer Rebecca Chou used her scheduled time to discuss the NOVs. She said this was saving “the best for last” at the end of the morning session.
Chou said, “Malibu is on our mind because of beach pollution, more so than Santa Monica.”
The senior agency engineer said while doing research on the memo of understanding between the city and the LA-RWQCB that is currently being considered for modifications or rescission, many unpermitted facilities in Malibu were discovered and an evaluation was launched.
She said there are 53 commercial facilities in the Civic Center, and of those 27 are unpermitted.
Chou indicated businesses are already generating more wastewater than the environment can sustain. “Malibu beaches are not safe,” she added, pointing out a newspaper article on the subject, as opposed to agency data.
City Councilmember John Sibert, who emceed the conference, emphasized after she spoke that “the City of Malibu is not the permitting agency. [This oversight] is the responsibility of the board.”
Privately, one council member called Chou’s and presumably the board’s decision to utilize the symposium as a forum as “the 500-pound gorilla in the room.”
What did not go unnoticed by the audience was that after Chou’s presentation and the break for lunch, Jonathan Bishop, the chief deputy director of the State Water Resources Control Board, who moderated an afternoon panel discussion and took questions from the attendees, said he would not allow any of the questions submitted by the public about the NOVs because “it would be inappropriate.” He did not elaborate.