Wastewater Studies in Civic Center Area Halted by City

• Council Debates Impact on RWQCB

BY BILL KOENEKER

In what has become a high stakes poker game between Malibu city officials and the Regional Water Quality Control Board over the fate of the Malibu Lumber shopping center, municipal officials played their cards openly this week in an effort to get the complex open as quickly as possible.
At the behest of Councilmember Sharon Barovsky, the council was poised to kill the groundwater monitoring study in the interest of financial responsibility and stop all other studies related to wastewater in the Civic Center.
Members, including Barovsky, appeared persuaded by their consultant’s presentation on the critical need for the groundwater study to continue. They were also told that only $60,000 would be saved if it was stopped now.
Barovsky said she was ready to table any attempt to halt the groundwater study, but wants the council to reject spending over $2 million for additional wastewater studies and designs needed to go forward with a Civic Center wastewater treatment plant. The council agreed to do just that.
Barovsky said she wants to be cautious about discretionary spending, given the state might strip cities and counties of revenue because of its economic woes.
She said she does not want to commit millions of dollars to wastewater studies if the state is going to raid the city’s coffers.
Though she voted with the majority, Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich did not seem convinced about that argument.
“I thought we were doing phase one [stormwater] and two [wastewater]. Doesn’t it look like we are not going forward?” asked the mayor, in a reference to the regional board demanding to know how the city is going to handle wastewater discharges in light of what they called overcapacity of the Civic Center water table.
Earlier, the city’s consultant said he did not think that was necessarily true, as the matter is complicated. He said what is important is collecting more data in the Civic Center to determine what is really going on with the groundwater table.
The thorny matter erupted recently when the Regional Water Quality Control Board expressed their concerns, and then threatened to take away the city’s discharge permitting authority over the Malibu Lumber shopping center and possibly other projects. The matter is up for review when the board is scheduled to meet on Nov. 13.
Councilmembers John Sibert and Jefferson Wagner both said they thought the city’s action would seem a reasonable and prudent financial move to make.
However, Conley Ulich remained unconvinced. “I think we should be going forward,” she said.
Sibert responded, “We are talking about paying as we go.”
The mayor said she thought an assessment district would pay for the design and construction plans for a wastewater plant.
The city manager said not for the upfront costs.
“But how are you going to explain this [to RWQCB]?” the mayor asked.
“We will tell them we cannot afford it,” answered Barovsky. “I don’t think this is a problem. We are way ahead in the monitoring study.”
Wagner added the monitoring study is very valuable and the modeling used has no biases. He predicted it would be accepted by the regional board.
The mayor then discussed how the site selection process could be resolved if the proposed development agreement with La Paz, the planned shopping and office commercial center, allowed the city to utilize a 2.3-acre site for a centralized wastewater plant.