$6-Million Claim Pending : Water District Repays $453,626 on Sludge Farm

The check is in the mail--but Las Virgenes Municipal Water District officials hope it will eventually be stamped “Return to Sender.”

District directors voted Monday night to repay $453,626 to state officials who have accused them of wasting money on a sewage disposal facility built with state and federal grants.

Grant administrators, who claim that a $12-million Calabasas sludge farm is twice the size needed, want Las Virgenes officials to repay them up to $6 million. The repayment approved Monday is the state’s part of the claim.

For more than six months, Las Virgenes leaders have steadfastly refused any repayment on grounds that the grants were sought and spent in good faith.

But they changed their minds Monday after learning that the Government Code authorizes the state’s Water Resources Control Board to exact a 25% penalty, plus 10% annual interest, on delinquent bills.

Penalty Would Start Nov. 9

Las Virgenes board members voted 4 to 0 to send the check after being told that the penalty clock will start ticking Nov. 9.

“We hope to get the money back from the state,” Las Virgenes General Manager Richard B. Baird said. “We just don’t want to risk having to pay a $100,000 penalty later.”

According to Baird, state and federal officials are continuing to audit the use of the 5-year-old sludge farm, dubbed “Rancho Las Virgenes” by local water officials.

The 91-acre farm, the only one of its type in California, cleanly disposes of about 80,000 gallons of sludge daily from the nearby Tapia Sewage Treatment Plant by injecting it into the ground. Crops such as hay thrive in the soil, fertilized by the solid-waste product that is left when household sewage is treated.

Federal Environmental Protection Agency officials say the Calabasas sludge farm is efficient and tidy but under-utilized.

Las Virgenes officials have acknowledged that the amount of sludge being pumped into the farm is 40% below estimates made in 1975 and 1976. They have been unable to explain why sludge-production projections made then for the grant applications were so far off.

Drought Theory

District engineers have speculated that a mid-’70s drought may have prompted Calabasas and Agoura homeowners served by the district to put bricks in their toilets to conserve water, creating extra-strength sewage at the time.

However, one EPA official has suggested that Las Virgenes officials “counted some of the same stuff twice” when the flow calculations were being made.

“I don’t think it’s morally right for the EPA to come back 10 years later and second-guess us,” Baird said Tuesday.

He said the reimbursement to the state will come from $2,500-per-house sewer hookup fees that Las Virgenes officials collect from residential construction within the 120-square-mile district between Woodland Hills and Thousand Oaks.

“We can come up with that kind of money,” Baird said of the half-million-dollar state pay-back. “But when you start talking about $6 million, you start scratching your head.”