Malibu Sewer Project OKd Despite Outcry

After more than two decades of bitter public debate, Los Angeles County supervisors Thursday approved a $43-million sewer system for Malibu despite the outcry of residents who will be taxed thousands of dollars and predict it will lead to haphazard development of one of Southern California’s most beautiful coastal areas.

Opponents of the sewer vowed to file a lawsuit to block the plan, complaining that homeowners would be strapped with unfair sewer fees while businesses and large landowners reap a financial windfall.

Coastal Panel

The county also faces a challenge from the California Coastal Commission, which informed the board Wednesday evening that it can’t form the sewer district without commission approval. Attorneys for the county disagree.

Many of the estimated 400 homeowners at Thursday’s hearing were upset that a sewer of any kind was approved. They say it will open the beachfront area to widespread commercial development that has been long sought by the county and long fought by the slow-growth advocates in the region.

In the absence of sewers, large commercial projects could not be built in Malibu and several are backed up for approval. Opponents say the construction could destroy the rural nature of the area.

“It not only allows growth, it’s an incentive for growth,” said John B. Murdoch, attorney for the Malibu Township Council, the largest civic group in the area.

Sewer backers argue that any growth will take place in an orderly fashion as permitted under local and state development plans.

The county’s plan, approved 4 to 0 by the supervisors with Kenneth Hahn absent, calls for construction of a treatment plant in Malibu’s Civic Center area and a pumping system to carry waste water up to 7 miles from septic tanks in troubled landside areas above Pacific Coast Highway.

County officials insisted that a sewer was required based on staff studies that they say documents a “significant public health hazard” because of discharges from malfunctioning septic tanks, particularly in the million-dollar beachfront properties. The findings by the Department of Health Services allowed the county to impose a sewer system--with typical hookup fees of $9,900 per home--without a vote of the community.

Opponents say no health hazard exists, citing as evidence the good water quality off the Malibu coast.

The supervisors said the sewer is also needed to prevent landslides that have caused tens of millions of dollars in damage to hillside homes and left the county liable for allowing the construction.

The action comes just 15 months after more than 1,000 residents packed the supervisors’ chambers for an angry confrontation over a proposed $86-million system. The board yielded to the pressure, but kept the plan alive while it formed a citizens committee to study cheaper alternatives.

The 11-member committee, which included a representative of Pepperdine University, several other large landowners and three members of the Township Council, endorsed the same system adopted Thursday. However, the cost of the system to homeowners more than doubled since its approval in October, mainly because of underestimated hookup costs. The increase assured another heated showdown with the community.

More than 400 Malibu residents showed up Thursday to protest the sewer proposal. But, unlike the 1987 confrontation, the crowd refrained from booing the county analysts whose statistics conflicted with the conclusions of the community’s own hired experts. And unlike 1987, community opposition was not unanimous.

Fewer than half of the property owners in the new sewer district, which stretches west from Tuna Canyon to the Malibu Civic Center area, filed written protests this time, county officials said.

“This system is not perfect . . . but when you compare it with what was proposed 14 or 16 months ago, this is in my judgment a much better system,” said Ed Edelman, board chairman. He said the scaled-down proposal is “tailor-made” for the needs of the coastal area and does not force a massive system “down the throats” of the community.

“It’s a system the community can more easily live with,” he said.

Edelman amended the plan to allow for local control of a new sewer district. He also asked the county staff to study how the plant’s maximum output of 1.8 million gallons per day of treated waste water can be reused instead of dumped into the ocean.

Under the plan, the average single-family homeowner in Malibu will be assessed $9,900 over 20 years for the $43-million sewer system, compared to the $86-million cost of the old proposal, which the board also considered Thursday. The average homeowner would have paid about $13,000 plus between $2,000 and $15,000 in hook-up fees under the old plan.

With the scaled-down system, 146 properties included in the original proposal are not taxed at all. Most of the exempted parcels belong to the community’s largest landowners and will be able to continue using septic tanks.

Sewer opponents said the biggest flaw is that it forces homeowners to pay for a system that mostly benefits the business community.

Shift in Burden Alleged

“The county’s proposal embodies significant apparent inequities, and overall shows a tremendous shift in (the) burden away from large, prosperous and commercial holdings and onto the typical single-family residence,” said John W. Buckley, a UCLA business professor and Malibu resident who analyzed the county’s assessment data.

Buckley also said that the estimated $43-million cost did not include adjustments for cost overruns, interest on the bond debt and future maintenance costs.

Mike Caggiano, a former Rand Corp. analyst, said that about 70% of the $43-million cost will be paid by property owners outside the Civic Center area, a vast majority of whom are single-family homeowners.

“Pepperdine and the Civic Center interests are paying less than they should,” he said. “They got a bargain.”

Under the new system, the fees for Roy Crummer, the largest commercial landowner in the Civic Center, were reduced from $14 million to $5.5 million, Crummer said. Pepperdine University also saw its assessment drop from $8.8 million to $3.3 million.

All major landowners in the Civic Center, however, were not pleased with the new plan. Hughes Aircraft Co., which has a research lab on a nearby bluff, said its assessment of $2.9 million is higher than under the 1987 plan.

Caggiano also said that the system’s inequities were highlighted by the county’s decision to charge sewer fees to Big Rock Mesa homes that had been condemned because of a massive 1983 landslide. Last week, the county paid $35 million of a $97-million settlement to 240 Big Rock homeowners for damages they suffered in the slide. In some cases, there is nothing left of the homes but foundations, but the property owners will be taxed anyway.

“If you’re going to assess them, maybe you should give them a mobile home rate,” Caggiano joked.

Harry Stone, deputy director of public works, said the condemned homes were assessed on the chance that the properties might be habitable again some day.

One key county argument for the sewer is that it will help stabilize the hillsides like Big Rock Mesa by keeping waste water out of the ground by pumping it to a treatment plant. Rising ground water was cited by geologists as the key factor in triggering the landslide.

Murdoch, attorney for the Malibu Township Council, said it has 30 days to file a lawsuit to block the plan, although he said he expects to file it much sooner.

“We are very confident that (board approval of the sewer system) won’t stand up in court,” he said. All along, Murdoch said, “a court confrontation appeared inevitable.”

Caggiano, a Malibu cityhood advocate, said the county acted quickly on the new sewer proposal to beat a proposed election on incorporation in November.

“They’re in a hurry,” he said. “They have rushed so that there is a sewer in place before there is a city and they have created very inequitable public policy.”

However, Supervisor Deane Dana said, “I have never been involved in a project that has had so much involvement from the community.” He said the project “has been worked over and discussed and rehashed long enough.”