Water Fight Could Lead to ‘Septic System Prohibition’

• City and Regional Board at Odds

BY BILL KOENEKER

A fight has broken out between the City of Malibu and the Regional Water Quality Control Board over the city’s oversight of its Lumber Yard shopping center. In what is considered a punitive action, the board, at a meeting on Nov. 13, is expected to consider rescinding a memo of understanding that gives the city waste discharge permitting power.
The tentative resolution, if adopted by the board next month, could result in the board directing the staff to prepare a septic system prohibition.
At the least, it could delay the opening of the shopping center by months, if not longer. and impact other commercial permits.
In September, the city notified the regional board of its intent to regulate its own discharge of the shopping center under the MOU.
Shortly thereafter, the board notified the city and Richard Weintraub, who is building the center, of its intent to issue waste discharge requirements for non-restaurant flows less than 3200 gallons per day and advised both parties that should the shopping center open without its requirements, the board might take enforcement action for illegal discharge.
A week later, the city told the state agency it intended to issue a permit for the shopping plaza under the MOU. Another week went by, and the board issued a 30-days notice letter informing the city of its intent to terminate the MOU. The city has continued overseeing the construction and permiting for the shopping center, according to RWQCB.
The give and take between the board and the city goes back several years, with each side apparently making promises about what would and could happen.
The city agreed to build a centralized plant in the Civic Center seven years ago and, after buying the Chili Cook-Off site, gave the RWQCB the impression it thought that would become what some at the time derisively named Leachfield Park.
However, further study found the site unsuitable for wastewater disposal, if the city was going to use it for a stormwater storage facility and the city moved forward with stormwater treatment at that location.
The wastewater component got put on hold while the city worked on lumber yard septic issues.
Then the city decided to discharge lumber yard effluent at Legacy Park and that led to further scrutiny by the RWQCB.
City officials originally thought they had an agreement with RWQCB officials that if they did a $500,000 groundwater monitoring study, they could proceed with the lumber yard permitting.
But when the Legacy Park EIR was recently released, RWQCB staff found fault with the elements dealing with groundwater discharge pertaining to the lumber yard and told city officials there were no studies about overall water quality impacts since the city indicated it was delaying a wastewater treatment plant and proceeding with stormwater treatment only.
During the previous year, the city and RWQCB staff had contined to meet on the lumber yard permit. RWQCB indicated they told the city about completing a groundwater study.
However, the RWQCB now says that despite the meetings between regional staff and the city, differences evolved about how that study would be conducted.
The RWQCB staff subsequently met with Weintraub in an attempt to revise the engineering designs for the shopping center to comply with state and regional water quality plans.
After an apparent agreement on the conditions required by the state agency for discharge, the RWQCB staff insists technical plans sent back to the regional staff did not meet all of the requirements and the matter is considered incomplete.
By then Weintraub and the city complained that the shopping center would not open as planned in October 2008. That is when the city reaffirmed it was going to issue a permit for the shopping center.
Now the regional board staff says it found that the “assimilative capacity of the Civic Center area is already exceeded under certain conditions. The existing onsite wastewater treatment commercial system in the Civic Center have systems which fail to adequately treat the entire volume of waste treated and which do not maintain the minimum five feet of separation.”
The tentative resolution states the city has failed to impose and enforce the board’s requirements on several different counts and the MOU could be terminated without immediate re-negotiation, and dischargers will be required to apply for permits for their discharges and may be subject to enforcement action if their effluent does not meet water quality objectives, if they did not previously receive a permit from the board, or if the permit provided by the city does not meet regional board standards.