High and Dry Hill Dwellers Must Import Own Water

A couple of weeks ago, Lee Loughnane, who plays trumpet in the rock band “Chicago,” embarked on a familiar routine. He made the 45-minute drive from his house in western Malibu to the U-Rent in Camarillo.

There, he leased a 1,500-gallon water tanker for $135 a day. He drove the truck back to his neighborhood, where Winding Way and DeButts Terrace rise above Paradise Cove.

He went to his assigned county fire hydrant, about a mile from his house, and used a pipe wrench to open it. He filled the truck while a meter recorded how much water he took so he could be billed later.

He drove the truck to his house and transferred the water to his 10,000-gallon storage tank.

Then he went back to the hydrant, again and again, until his tank was full. After nearly eight hours of work, he was free to return the truck to Camarillo and retrieve his car.

“That should be enough water for two to four months,” Loughnane said. “I should be good through most of the winter.”

The water run was not included in the easy life Loughnane envisioned seven years ago when he built his lavish house, complete with recording studio, solar energy and a sweeping view of the Pacific.

But like the dozen neighbors living in the 500-acre area, and dozens more who own property there but are not allowed to build, Loughnane is learning the limits of life with no steady source of water, a basic commodity that even the poorest urban families take for granted.

In some cases, property owners face the inconvenience and expense of importing water by truck or private pipeline. Others say they have lost investments worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Ever since saltwater intrusion ruined the local wells in the mid-1970s, the residents of the Winding Way area have been trying to get a county water system in place.

Most of them signed a petition for an assessment district, giving the county authority to build a system of pipes, a 267,000-gallon storage tank and a service road. The county would then collect the costs from all of the owners there.

But each year, something else caused a delay. Revised schedules were issued, listing new completion dates: Sept. 30, 1982; Feb. 29, 1984; Nov. 1, 1985. Two weeks ago, the county announced that the system would be finished in May, 1987.

For those, like Loughnane, who came up with temporary solutions, the sense of adventure is great. Even with careful scheduling of how often clothes can be laundered and toilets flushed, residents have been known to run dry in the middle of a shower. Landscaping has withered away.

Still, such accounts pale before those of the property owners who did not build their houses before 1981. That year, the county Fire Department initiated a policy of denying building permits in areas without proper water and access. Fire officials said the department did not want to authorize structures that it could not defend if the surrounding mountain brush were ablaze.

This week, the county Board of Supervisors is expected to authorize a request for bids on the water project--the furthest the process has ever gone.

But the property owners are far from reassured. The project manager for the Department of Public Works, Michael Nagao, has estimated that the bids could come in so high that the system may cost $5.3 million--$2 million more than the owners originally were assessed.

“Any cost more than $3.3 million will cause us to reassess the improvement district,” Nagao said. That means, of course, another delay.

In fact, since each owner of the 80 parcels involved would have to make a higher payment, each will have the opportunity to reconsider involvement in the project.

“No one’s property will be worth a penny if this doesn’t go through,” said Vicki Weston, who with her husband, Stan, bought nearly three acres in the district in 1981. “But not everybody sees it that way and we could lose this thing” if another vote is taken, she said.

Expressing Concern

Some longtime property owners had already expressed concern that the project would be too costly and would bring in more development than they wanted to see. “We’re basically going to shell out a bundle for something we either don’t need at all (in some cases) or could do without” in others, one self-described “old-timer” wrote in 1982.

Supervisor Deane Dana, whose 4th District includes Malibu, has concluded that the system is necessary.

“We have been supportive of the project from the very beginning,” said Peter Ireland, Dana’s Malibu field deputy. “The whole process throughout has really been frustrating, certainly for the residents and for the people in the Department of Public Works who have been on the project, and frustrating for us, too.”

The delays began in 1976, shortly after the supervisors first approved forming the assessment district that would bill residents for the water system. The California Coastal Commission vetoed the project because the county had not produced a general plan for Malibu outlining the expected growth in the region.

In 1981, after a general plan was adopted, the commission granted a permit--on the condition that the residents also build a public horse trail alongside the service road. And, because more houses had been built in the intervening years, the system would have to serve more properties. So the project had to be redesigned.

There were other problems. Although 13 property owners donated thousands of dollars worth of rights of way to the county to speed the process, one resident was upset when the county wanted to remove a eucalyptus tree on her property to make room for the service road. The design was changed again.

Trees Moved

“We had another property owner who wanted to save all of his trees,” Nagao said. “Through negotiations, we were able to take maybe a dozen trees. We’re even moving a couple of trees.”

A third owner objected to the severe grading the county planned on her lot, Nagao said, so “we deleted the portion of the road on her property.” Now, the proposed road has become two streets that border the woman’s parcel, each with an entrance into the community from Pacific Coast Highway.

Other changes were required when the county did not provide for relocation of telephone poles and the plans for storm drains were deemed inadequate.

“The tip of the iceberg is changing the road,” Nagao said. “The bottom of the iceberg is all this work. Every time we change the road, we have to change all the legal descriptions and all the documents.”