Panel Turns Back Bid for Early Start on Malibu Sewer : Development: County sought to bypass several approval stages on the $43-million system. It may sue to reverse the decision.

The California Coastal Commission has dealt a severe blow to a bid by Los Angeles County to speed construction of the controversial regional sewer system in Malibu.

By a unanimous vote, the state panel this week rejected the county’s request to go forward with its proposed $43-million sewer system, bypassing several intermediate stages of approval from the commission that ordinarily could be expected to take at least several more months.

The vote Tuesday by the Coastal Commission was its second rebuff of the day to the county supervisors’ efforts to expedite development in an unincorporated coastal area. Minutes earlier, the panel decided to delay for several months its consideration of changes the county wants to make in its development plans for Marina del Rey.

County officials indicated that they may file a lawsuit against the commission to reverse the Malibu decision.

“We would have obviously liked to have seen the vote go the other way,” said Harry Stone, the county’s deputy director of public works. “Now we will have to sit down with our attorneys and see what our options are.”

Left unchallenged, the outcome greatly diminishes the likelihood that the county will be able to start work on the sewer system before Malibu becomes a city.

Although voters overwhelmingly approved cityhood last month, the county has gone to court to delay the actual incorporation and wants to start construction of the sewer before a new Malibu government has the chance to block it. A three-judge panel in Los Angeles has set a July 18 hearing to decide whether incorporation is allowed to go forward or whether the county can succeed in delaying it until next March.

Opponents of the sewer hailed the state panel’s decision Tuesday in Long Beach as a big boost to their cause.

“What the county wanted was to get its foot in the door by starting construction before cityhood in the hope that, once started, the project would be too far along to stop,” said John Murdock, an attorney for the Malibu Township Council. “The commission has said no to that.”

Last November, the coastal panel approved a sewer plan that calls for a sewer system 25% to 40% smaller than what the county insisted upon.

However, the actual construction must also be approved by the Coastal Commission before the work can begin. County officials had predicted as recently as three months ago that it might be April, 1991, before approvals are obtained and next June before the first pipe is laid.

On Tuesday, an attorney for the county asked the panel to clear the way for work to begin on a key component of the system, a waste treatment plant to be built on six acres near Pepperdine University that the county wants to acquire.

But the coastal panel rejected the proposal as a “piecemeal approach,” and several commissioners, including Malibu resident Madelyn Glickfeld, expressed irritation that the county should even suggest such a thing.

Glickfeld accused county officials of “making a mockery” of the commission’s hearing process.

“I find it incomprehensible that you would ask us to approve a narrow part of a plan for a property that is not zoned for the use that is being proposed when there have been no public hearings, and we haven’t seen an adequate analysis of alternative sites,” she said.

County officials had sought to disqualify Glickfeld from participating in the hearing, accusing her of having a conflict of interest since her home is within the tax assessment district for the proposed sewer. However, a deputy attorney general concluded that no conflict existed.

Residents of Malibu Country Estates, whose homes would be next to the proposed treatment plant, last week filed a lawsuit against the county in a bid to prevent the plant from being built there. The property is zoned for residential use.

The site, which the county has said it will acquire by condemnation if necessary, also is entangled in a bitter dispute between the sisters of the late Merritt Adamson, who control the Adamson Cos., and Adamson’s widow, Sharon, who is a limited partner with the firm.

The sisters, Sylvia R.A. Neville and Rhoda-May Dallas, agreed to surrender the land to the county on behalf of the company. But Sharon Adamson, who opposes the building of the sewer plant on the site, contends that the land was among assets owned jointly by her husband and his sisters outside the company, and that the firm has no right to deal it away.

In testimony before the commission Tuesday, Sharon Adamson warned the commission that she did not intend to relinquish her claim to the property without a fight.

“I own an undivided one-third interest in this property,” she said. “I have not agreed to donate it to the county. I do not intend to donate it to the county, and I do not see the county’s obtaining possession of it in the foreseeable future.”

In approving a bid by Malibu residents to vote on cityhood last year, the Local Agency Formation Commission stipulated that the county be allowed to retain control over the sewer system for up to 10 years after incorporation.

Some members of LAFCO, however, expressed doubts about the legality of the provision, and several of the future City Council members have made it clear that they favor challenging it once Malibu becomes a city.