Board Yields, Delays Vote on Malibu Sewer

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, yielding to 1,000 angry opponents--including a number of movie celebrities--who packed the board’s chamber, agreed Thursday to put off voting on whether to build an $86-million sewer system for the Malibu beachfront community.

Effectively killing the proposal for the foreseeable future, two supervisors said they wanted to examine scaled-down alternatives. Without four votes of the five-member board, the sewer system cannot be approved.

The supervisors, questioning the credibility of their own staff’s findings, ordered a new study of the costly proposal, sought by county officials during more than two decades of controversy.

“Their credibility and what they stand for has been substantially undermined,” said Supervisor Ed Edelman, referring to county statistics that were used to justify the regional sewer system.

Partisans on both sides of the issue said the board’s eventual decision, not expected until next year, could change Malibu from a quiet coastal community of 20,000 to a busy commercial strip of hotels and condominiums.

After hours of testimony from dozens of speakers who challenged the county’s assertion that Malibu faces a health hazard because of overflows from many of its 2,419 private septic tanks, the supervisors backed away from the plan that virtually the entire Malibu community has long opposed. Malibu voters have rejected sewer system bond issues three times in 21 years.

Instead, the supervisors voted 4 to 0 to impose a building moratorium on the Malibu coastline, established a Malibu citizens’ committee to recommend alternatives and ordered stronger enforcement of existing septic tank codes.

The county Department of Health Services was also ordered to consider inspection of all area septic tanks, instead of the small sampling it used to analyze waste overflow in 1985 and 1986.

The vote was greeted by applause and shouts of “Thank you!” from Malibu residents who rode to the hearing in a 17-bus caravan and sat through the entire day of debate.

In the end, Supervisors Edelman and Mike Antonovich both said they wanted to see how costs could be cut by upgrading septic tanks and using and expanding three small sewer systems that already exist.

“It seems to me that we should be doing all we can to reduce the cost as a good-faith effort to pass that reduction onto taxpayers,” said board chairman Antonovich, who suggested that the board consider turning the project over to a private firm, which county officials have said could save an estimated 15% in project costs.

The cost of the system became the central focus of the emotional hearing as dozens of speakers, including Pepperdine University President David Davenport and Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), challenged the county. They questioned the county consultant’s figures supporting the sewer system and suggested that supervisors seek other solutions to improve sewage disposal along the Malibu coast.

Davenport called the sewer proposal “untenable,” adding that the university does not oppose a sewer system for Malibu, just the $86 million one proposed by the county. Pepperdine has received notice that its assessment will be $8.8 million if the system is built. Davenport said that amount is $6 million more than the university has estimated it would cost to expand its existing system.

Pepperdine has a self-contained sewer system; most of the rest of Malibu uses septic tanks.

Davenport said that while Malibu is an extremely diverse community that has often split on growth issues, the county’s sewer proposal “has managed to unify virtually all of Malibu. (The proposal) has virtually no support.”

County officials estimate that Malibu homeowners would have to pay between $13,000 and $28,000 for the system, one of the highest prices ever paid for a sewer system by a community in California. For property owners paying the higher amount, monthly bills, with interest, would total $150 for 24 years, county officials said.

However, in a study presented to supervisors Thursday, a UCLA accounting professor disputed the cost estimate for the project, claiming that the $86-million figure does not include allowances for cost overruns, “which are usually underestimated by 100% to 120%” for large public works projects.

The study, done by John W. Buckley, Arthur Young Distinguished Professor of Accounting at UCLA’s Graduate School of Management, estimated the actual cost of the system between $311 million and $590 million, which, Buckley concluded, would raise the average assessment for each property to nearly $250,000.

“Focusing on the typical single-family residence, I estimate that the proposed project will place a levy of about $99,700 to the typical single-family home, requiring a monthly payment of $397 for the next 24 years,” Buckley concluded in the report, prepared for the Malibu Township Council, a civic group representing more than 1,000 families in Malibu.

Township Council attorney John B. Murdoch, who presented the study to supervisors because Buckley was ill, said, “If you were to put this (the county’s environmental impact report) out in the investment world, you would be sued for fraud,” he said.

Supervisor Pete Schabarum chastised Murdoch, saying he was overstating his case.

Supervisor Deane Dana, a major proponent of the regional sewer system, also challenged a portion of the Buckley estimate, saying that the Rand Corp. estimate for public works project overruns that he used was too high, and that the interest payment figures for the public bond on the project were done at a 12% rate, the highest allowed by state law.

Bused to Meeting

More than 800 balloon and placard-carrying Malibu residents boarded chartered buses outside the Malibu Civic Center before 7 a.m. to go to the hearing, where they were joined by another 200 community members, including celebrities such as Ali MacGraw, Christie Brinkley, Olivia Newton-John and Rob Lowe.

“I’ve been a resident of Malibu for 15 years and the quality of life there means a lot to me,” said MacGraw, who pleaded with supervisors to drop the county’s sewer proposal. “I see this whole issue as one colossal mistake and we must seek an alternative solution or face further ocean pollution.”

But the county Health Department has declared that the continued reliance on septic systems is dangerous, claiming that raw sewage from the high-priced homes’ septic tanks seeps onto Malibu’s popular public beaches, along with sewage from ocean-front businesses that have relied on septic tanks for 40 years.

Hissed by the Crowd

Tom Tidemanson, county public works director, was hissed by the partisan, overflow audience when he told supervisors that the regional system is necessary to maintain public health and protect against landslides by keeping overflow water and sewage out of the soil in some of the unstable hillsides above Pacific Coast Highway. In addition, he said, the sewer system is required for future development in the downtown Malibu area and construction of the thousands of homes allowed by the state-endorsed coastal plan.