Keys Resident Files 1st of Threatened Suits Over Water Contamination

A resident of the Ventura Keys, a neighborhood of 300 expensive waterfront homes just north of Ventura Harbor, filed suit Wednesday against the city of Ventura seeking an unspecified amount in lost property values, allegedly from the city’s contamination of the Keys waterways.

The suit, filed by attorney Donald M. Adams Jr. in Ventura County Superior Court, follows several warnings by Keys homeowners at recent City Council meetings that they would file suit unless the city cleaned up the water channels adjoining their back yards.

Adams said his suit will be followed by 100 virtually identical suits from his neighbors, who filed legal claims with the city during the first two weeks of November.

The legal claim is the first step before a suit can be filed against the city, which then has 45 days to respond. Adams filed his claim in September. Adams said a Keys homeowner group has raised a $255,000 war chest to finance the lawsuits.

In his suit, Adams claims that the city has violated state law by allowing contaminants from sewer and storm-drain runoffs to pollute the Keys. In recent months, tests by the city show coliform counts of up to 24 times the state limit for the Keys, which is designated by the state as a water-sports recreation area.

Coliform is a biological contaminant that comes from fecal matter and dead animals, among other things. In August, the city posted the two small beaches at the Keys with warnings that swimming could result in health hazards. The warnings are still in place.

“The city flat-out refuses to pay for the cleanup of the contaminants coming out of its drainage system,” Adams said Wednesday.

For their part, city officials said Wednesday that they regret that Keys residents have decided to fight them in court.

“It just means that we’ll be talking through lawyers instead of with each other, and that makes me sad,” said Assistant City Manager Laurianne Brekke, who had been negotiating with the Keys residents on behalf of the city.

City officials involved in these negotiations argue that the Keys was wrongly designated as a water-sports area and that health standards on the waterways should be relaxed, since most marinas in the state are not required to maintain low coliform counts. City Manager John S. Baker said three weeks ago that the city plans to petition the state to downgrade the Keys’ designation.

Adams sees it differently. “To those members on the City Council who call themselves environmentalists, I say shame on you for trying to eliminate water contamination standards and refusing to enforce public health codes,” he said.

The lawsuit also names the Ventura Port District, Ventura County, the Ventura County Flood Control District and CalTrans as co-defendants.

The county, the Flood Control District and the Port District are accused of failing to maintain the Arundell Barranca, a drainage ditch from which most of the contaminants allegedly come.

CalTrans is cited for its alleged failure to maintain its drainage system on the Ventura Freeway. The freeway’s runoff, the lawsuit alleges, passes untreated directly into the Keys through the Arundell Barranca.

In addition to compensating property owners for the alleged loss in property value of their homes--which Adams estimated at $500,000 each--the suit demands that the city reimburse the homeowners for the loss of the closed beaches, which the homeowners co-own.

The suit also demands that the city pay in full for the dredging of the Keys, claiming that, at low tide, residents are unable to use the harbor, because sediment impairs their passage through the Keys’ channels.

Between 1964, when the Keys were developed, and 1978, the residents paid for dredging costs through a tax-assessment district. But the district was dismantled by Proposition 13, the landmark property tax-slashing measure.

Since then, the Keys were only partly dredged once in the mid-1980s, and that was funded by a federal disaster relief fund in the aftermath of a major winter storm.

Last May, the city tried to revive a revamped version of the old tax-assessment district, but after a strong showing against the proposal from Keys residents, the tax-assessment ordinance was shelved.

In June, after weeks of negotiating, the city offered to pay for 20% of the dredging. But the residents rejected the offer.

Two months later, city and county officials called in by the Keys residents tested the channels and found the contaminants. The residents have been threatening the city with lawsuits ever since.