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’
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.
