‘No-Discharge’ Permit Issued by RWQCB to Impact La Paz Project

• Action Is the First Taken by the Regional Board

BY BILL KOENEKER

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board last week approved a staff recommendation to issue a no-discharge permit for the proposed La Paz office and retail complex approved by the City of Malibu.
RWQCB staff member Elizabeth Erickson acknowledged it is the first time the board has issued a no discharge order.
Erickson explained that the action is in anticipation of another hearing successfully sought before the state board by La Paz representatives who maintain that their application for a zero discharge permit was automatically approved because of the permit streamlining act.
The State Water Resources Control Board is expected to hear the La Paz submittal on the streamline permit later. No date has been set.
The LARWQCB has placed the entire Civic Center area under a septic system prohibition on all new development and has decided that La Paz is no exception.
However, La Paz, the City of Malibu and others argue the prohibition is not in effect because it has to be approved by the state board, which has not yet acted on the matter. La Paz contends, therefore, that the regional board is acting prematurely.
Environmental groups also weighed in on last week’s decision, siding with the board and suggesting as did the RWQCB staff that La Paz cannot ensure that the treated wastewater would not result in violations of water quality standards.
“The La Paz project’s wastewater discharge will impact impaired water bodies with imposed TMDLs…the Regional Board must prohibit the wastewater discharge from La Paz,” wrote the Santa Monica Baykeeper. “The Regional Board was justified in demanding from La Paz specific technical information to demonstrate the proposed no-net discharge wastewater treatment system will in fact result in no impact on the Malibu Valley groundwater basin.”
La Paz has argued with the RWQCB staff and before the Regional Board last week that it had provided all of the technical information required by the staff.
The RWQCB staff successfully argued that La Paz never provided the additional evidence demonstrating the successful operation of landscape irrigation to confirm Las Paz’s evapotranspiration model and additional analysis of wastewater treatment systems and associated groundwater discharge.”
Heal the Bay was more direct about how the no-discharge order should apply to La Paz in relation to the Civic Center prohibition. “In general we are supportive of this order and believe it is necessary and consistent. However, the language of the order should not give the discharger the false impression that a new report of waste discharge might be acceptable and thereby allow a waiver from the prohibition requirements,” wrote Mark Gold, the president of Heal the Bay.
The Heal the Bay letter talks about how the exceptions to the prohibition are “narrow and do not apply to the applicant.”
However, the tentative order of the prohibition included an exemption for zero discharge wastewater systems, but was taken out of the final order at the last minute with the explanation to the board that neither the RWQCB nor the city could adequately monitor such a complicated system.
Heal the Bay suggested the board’s order left a door open for La Paz to file another report giving the RWQCB the info it needed in the form of engineering reports for its originally sought permit.
“Regional Board should go further and not even consider future applications submitted for this project until the Civic Center has a centralized water recycling facility in place,” the Heal the Bay letter concluded.