OJAI VALLEY : Board to Study Sale of Reclaimed Water

Over the objections of environmentalists, the Ojai Valley Sanitary District decided Monday to consider selling treated waste water being dumped from its sewage plant into the Ventura River.

The district’s board of directors voted 5 to 2 to set aside $50,000 to study the market potential, legal issues and environmental impacts of selling reclaimed water from the sewage plant south of Foster Park.

The sewer district board, serving 11,000 customers in Ojai Valley and in the city of Ventura north of Shell Road, also was expected to vote late Monday to raise rates by 55%, which will cost the average homeowner an extra $5.58 per month beginning in August.

The money is needed to raise $725,000 to install new filters in the sewage treatment plant, which will make the 2.1-million gallons of waste water released from the plant every day nearly drinkable. The project is scheduled for completion in three years.

Ojai Mayor Nina Shelley and James Brady, district board members, objected to moving ahead with a plan to resell the water, which they said might jeopardize river habitats during a drought.

But more than half of the discharged amount could be sold, because the Environmental Protection Agency has required that only 840,000 gallons per day be released from the plant to replenish the river and protect spawning areas for fish and other wildlife, said Eric Oltmann, district general manager.

So far, none of the water from the treatment plant has been sold, but customers have been lining up for months to buy the higher quality water, Oltmann said.

“It’s not going to be a question of whether that water is reclaimed,” Oltmann said. “It will be a question of who is going to do it.”

Oltmann said that if the sewer district doesn’t sell its treated water, the city of Ventura could lay claim to it under a 1963 agreement that allows the district to lease the land for the treatment plant for $1 a year.

Water resale offers the district “a glimmer of hope,” Oltmann said, as a means of offsetting sewer-rate increases that could jump by $32 a month in the next few years for the average residential customer.

Agricultural use would be given priority for the reclaimed water. Among those who have expressed interest in using reclaimed waste water are representatives for the Farmont Golf Club, a proposed 18-hole golf course near Lake Casitas, and California State University for its proposed four-year college on the Taylor Ranch northwest of Ventura.