Angry Fight on Malibu Sewer Reaches Crucial Point

Los Angeles County’s 21-year battle to force a costly sewer system on the Malibu area reaches a crucial point at a public hearing next week, amid evidence that county officials have exaggerated the need for a sewer.

Busloads of angry Malibu residents, who have voted down sewer bond issues three times since 1966, are expected to appear Thursday in the Board of Supervisors’ chambers. Partisans for both sides said a decision by supervisors could determine whether Malibu remains a quiet beach community or is developed with hotels and condominiums.

The county wants residents to pay for an $86-million regional sewer system that will cost $13,000 to $28,000 per household, one of the highest prices ever paid for a sewer system by a community in California.

While conceding that some supporting data is flawed, county officials stand by their conclusion that a major system is needed.

Small-Scale Solutions

Besides residents, opponents include community leaders and several leading environmentalists. They all admit that Malibu has its sewage-disposal problems but say the county is ignoring small-scale solutions in favor of a big system sought by developers. To comply with the Local Coastal Plan, no major development can occur in Malibu without improving sewage disposal.

At the center of the dispute is the county’s 1985 finding that a health risk exists, caused by raw sewage seeping onto Malibu’s popular public beaches from the high-priced homes and ocean view businesses that have relied for 40 years on septic tanks.

However, a Times investigation completed in September has found that the county’s claims of septic tank problems have been grossly overstated and that there is little evidence to support its claim of sewage pollution of public beaches.

Malibu’s residents, wealthy and middle-class alike, are outraged by the cost, and complain that they have been lied to by the county. But as voters, the residents may now have little say in the matter.

The declaration of a health hazard allowed the county to prepare an environmental report recommending a regional sewer. The county supervisors can now approve the sewer without a vote of the people, but they must have a 4-1 majority if residents holding more than 50% of Malibu’s land protest in writing. The Malibu Township Council has launched a feverish campaign, appealing through mailers, meetings and billboards, to collect enough letters opposing the sewer.

Meanwhile, the investigation by The Times of county, city and state records, including septic tank maintenance and repair data and water-quality testing results, shows marked discrepancies in many of the county’s claims. They include:

- The county seriously overstated a key statistic used to declare the health threat in 1985, and repeated it in public meetings and in environmental reports as compelling evidence of a widespread sanitation crisis among 2,419 septic tanks in Malibu.

Officials last week admitted that they were wrong in claiming that backed-up septic tanks in Malibu required 5,300 service calls in 1984. They attributed the figure to a now-retired official who estimated the calls based on a six-week period.

Number Called ‘Significant’

Records show that actually 738 service calls were made in 1984, a number that a county health official, Jack Petralia, said is “still significant.” However, county records show a majority of the 738 calls were in response to a small cadre of repeat offenders who account for less than 5% of Malibu’s septic systems.

- A 45.5% septic tank “failure rate” among beachfront homes, cited at public meetings and in environmental reports, has almost no relation to current failures, which are less than 3% a year.

Petralia said the county did not “mean to mislead anyone” when it omitted the fact that the figure represents all failures and major repairs recorded in Malibu since 1944.

Counting failures from past decades is “a legitimate way to indicate problems,” Petralia said, even though the number also includes many normal one-time renovations to 20- and 30-year-old systems. Failures generally occur when sewage clogs a tank’s underground seepage area, causing sewage backups onto the ground.

- The county’s finding in 1985 that a health risk exists in Malibu is not supported by county, city or state water-quality testing records for the last five years, which show that Malibu’s surf is among the cleanest off the Los Angeles area.

See a Health Risk

Petralia and a county consultant said they are convinced that beach users run a health risk because inspectors have twice discovered that many beach homes illegally discharge kitchen and wash water, and--in a handful of cases--raw sewage.

However, water testing by the city and county shows that bacteria problems appear off Malibu only after rainfall, the same pattern as in Santa Monica Bay, where no septic tanks exist. Scientists say that after rain, beaches are inundated with bacteria because of dirty runoff containing bird, dog, and other animal droppings.

- The county’s much-publicized 1983 Malibu beach closure, which Supervisor Deane Dana and other officials now blame on widespread sewage contamination from storm-gutted septic tanks, was not based upon actual detection of widespread pollution.

County records show, and county officials confirm, that 12 miles of beach were closed as a precaution, for fear that a few spotty areas of bacteria pollution might spread, but they never did. High levels of coliform bacterias were limited almost exclusively to a 1 1/2-mile strip along Malibu Road, and were found there only in places.

(Officials explain that coliform and fecal coliform are harmless bacteria found in soils, vegetation and human and animal digestive tracts. They are monitored by regulatory agencies because their presence in water can sometimes mean that sewage has been spilled.)

Blame Dirty Streets

Moreover, in the days before the closure, beaches throughout Santa Monica Bay had coliform levels as high as Malibu’s. City and state scientists blamed it on dirty street runoff from record rainfalls, further clouding the county’s claim that sewage--not runoff--was polluting Malibu.

Rimmon Fay, a noted marine biologist and an environmentalist with Heal the Bay, said the county cannot come up with any Malibu pollution during a dry spell, “because there isn’t any.”

James Murdoch, attorney for the Malibu Township Council, said the county’s claims “are as close to fraud as you can get without being in court.”

Lucile Keller, a Malibu resident who unearthed some of the discrepancies while doing a computer analysis of county septic tank records, said she was “absolutely mind-boggled” that data dating as far back as the 1940s was used.

“How can they tell us to pay $13,000 or $30,000 for a new sewer, and then be so misleading and careless about the truth?” Keller asked.

Petralia, the county health officer, conceded that some misleading statistics have been released by the county, but said the bulk of the evidence justifies concern for public health.

“You can argue about the statistics to make either side look good, but the fact is that Malibu’s got a major problem and it’s our responsibility to do something about it,” he said.

Frank Grant of James M. Montgomery Consulting Engineers Inc., a county consultant who wrote the environmental report favoring the regional sewer, said, “The public health field is not doing its job if it waits until people are dying or sick, and I don’t think Malibu understands that.”

Supervisor Dana said that building a regional sewer is the only way to accommodate new growth allowed under the coastal plan, particularly in Malibu’s “downtown” Civic Center area.

Peter Ireland, his aide, said residents “are criticizing the county for trying to do a good job out there, for bringing them into the 20th Century on sanitation and good planning.”

Official ‘Not Convinced’

If approved, the county’s plan will undergo scrutiny from the California Coastal Commission, which must give final approval.

Newly appointed Commissioner Madelyn Glickfeld, speaking at a forum sponsored by the Fund for the Environment, said she is “not convinced” that the county needs a regional sewer, and that a smaller scale solution may be appropriate.

State Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) and state Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) said landowners whose septic tanks are working well should not be forced to buy into a system that will benefit developers and a small percentage of houses with problems.

Hart has authored a bill that would require the county to prove its claims of a health hazard. He said the regional sewer “is a massive response to a fairly limited problem.”

“I hate to attribute motives as to what’s really going on here,” Hart said, “but a regional sewer really is a potential threat to a way of life that’s almost an endangered species in metropolitan Los Angeles.”

Hayden, who was instrumental in rallying environmental opposition to the sewer, warns of the possibility of a major environmental accident.

“The sewer line will be constructed in ground notorious for movement and slippage, all but guaranteeing a future environmental disaster,” Hayden said.

However, Grant, the county consultant, said that such disasters can be prevented using flexible pipes, conducting regular underground camera inspections of pipes, and installing backup generators for use during power failures.

“It would have to be a far-fetched, war-type situation,” for a major spillage to occur, he said.

Grant said he is convinced that a regional sewer is the best solution.

Among the worst problems cited by Grant and the county in a final environmental report issued Oct. 9 were troubles experienced by Malibu’s shopping areas and by half a dozen restaurants, where heavy grease and water discharges cause extreme backup problems.

County records show that in 1984, pumpers were called in 29 times to correct backed-up septic tanks at the Segal Shopping Center. Similarly, the Malibu Inn Omelette Parlor required 23 pumpings, the Sands Shopping Center needed 12, and the Beaurivage Restaurant needed 11 pumpings.

A high water table only five feet below the Civic Center area has created the chronic sewage problems there.

But in some of the worst instances of beachfront troubles, the county concedes that its own policies are to blame.

Under the so-called “Malibu waiver,” the county has allowed scores of houses to be built on lots that are not big enough to absorb sewage from a septic tank and leach field system.

Experts said that in some cases, the lack of land can be solved only with a sewer system or by using available alternative technologies, such as reduced-water toilets.

Residents support such alternative technologies, and have also suggested building two or three small neighborhood sewage plants--called package plants--in areas with problems.

Cites Expense, Difficulties

But Brian Scanlon, a county engineer, said such plants are too expensive to operate and pose tremendous problems in finding sites for them.

The most expensive package plant in the Los Angeles area is in La Canada-Flintridge, where residents pay $400 a year for sewage treatment. With a regional sewer, residents would have to pay $180 a year, a difference that Keller said “is nothing to us if it means keeping the big sewer out.”

Another possibility is the creation of a so-called on-site waste management zone.

In several other areas of California, such management zones are successfully overseeing private septic tanks, ordering residents to perform regular maintenance or renovations, and teaching them how to care for their systems.

But the management zone idea is opposed by the Montgomery firm, the county’s consultant, who contends that a zone would not solve all of Malibu’s sewage woes.

However, Montgomery is widely expected to bid on the $86-million regional sewer if it is approved, and residents argue that the company has a conflict of interest.

Grant, of Montgomery, said it is common practice for consulting engineers to bid on projects they have recommended, and that his staff “picked the most economical and technologically feasible” project.

That reassurance is little consolation to the residents, whose relationship with the county is at an all-time low.

“We just don’t believe them anymore,” said Leon Cooper, president of the Malibu Township Council. “I don’t know that you can blame us.”