Flap over septic tanks divides Calabasas residents, city officials

Fire your lawyer. Hire a plumber.

That’s the advice Calabasas officials are giving residents who are fighting a crackdown on alleged septic system problems and other building code violations in rural sections of the city west of the San Fernando Valley.

Property owners charge that building inspectors’ raids of supposedly substandard homes are illegal because municipal leaders failed to follow state regulations when they beefed up the city’s health and safety codes between 2007 and 2009.

The state requires cities to file “findings” with the State Building Standards Commission that justify changes made to municipal building codes.

Calabasas inspectors began enforcement of its tougher rules in July with a raid on a pioneering family’s 60-acre Stokes Canyon ranch and followed that up with citations issued to residents of nearby Old Topanga Canyon.

But the city didn’t file its required findings with Sacramento officials until this week, according to commission staff members.

City officials disputed that, insisting that they have conformed to state regulations and that the violations they have issued homeowners are valid. “The city did make the findings required to support its local amendments to the state Building Standards Commission,” said City Atty. Michael Colantuono.

The dispute escalated when a lawyer for homeowners filed a flurry of city records inspection requests and warned that code enforcement inspectors “may have liability” for costs incurred by residents trying to repair alleged violations.

The city fired back by telling homeowners they would be better off spending their money on “engineers, carpenters and plumbers than on lawyers.”

Four people were left homeless when the city ordered water and power cut off to the Stokes Canyon ranch. In Old Topanga Canyon one resident says he has been told to make $50,000 in modifications to his 1939 home, and another faces repairs he says total $150,000 to a house built in 1928.

Nancy Schreiner, the residents’ attorney, said she discovered the city’s oversight when checking state records. According to the Building Standards Commission office, the city did not file its findings until Sept. 27. The only other Calabasas code change on record involved a 2004 electrical code modification.

Old Topanga Canyon residents have complained the city derisively refers to their neighborhood as “Dogpatch” and refuses to recognize the “legal, non-conforming” status of homes built prior to the city’s 1991 incorporation. State law includes provisions that “grandfather” old structures built to earlier construction standards.

They described the city’s warning that “for those who prefer to hire lawyers, the city has lawyers too” as insulting.

Jody Thomas, president of the Old Topanga Homeowners Inc., said residents want to keep their septic tanks operating properly. But “it became increasingly apparent, however, that it was the intention of the city to create the most stringent ordinance in the country, so as to set us all up to fail,” she said.

That would set the stage for construction of a municipal sewer line through the canyon and trigger overdevelopment of Old Topanga, she said. And that, Thomas said, could spell the end of the area’s rural feel.

bob.pool@latimes.com