Waste-Water Fees Down the Drain

* Once again I’m shocked when reviewing my current property tax statement. The whopping increase again is the sanitary district charge for treating waste water. In my case it started out at $48 in 1978-79, the year Proposition 13 took effect. Last year it was $322 and this year it was $385. Next year it’s expected to go up another 20%.

We are back to the same old problem of people being taxed (oops, I mean assessed) out of their homes. Do we really have to pay these extravagant fees in order to improve the waste water up to drinking water standards? I am talking about the last five miles of the Ventura River (more like a stream except during floods) before entering the Pacific.

In 1982, $8 million was spent to bring the Ojai Valley Sanitary District’s waste-water treatment plant up to state standards, and that was supposed to last for 20 years. But in 1990 more improvements were mandated by the Regional Water Quality Control Board. The members of this state board are apparently caught between federal mandates imposed on the state and local environmentalists such as the Friends of the Ventura River who claim concern for the riparian habitat of the five-mile stretch of the river. The fervor of the environmentalists apparently negates any concern for costs. As in the case of air pollution, they want to spend the same amount eliminating the last 2% of pollutants as was spent on the first 98%.

It would seem that the whole expensive project is fanciful because practically speaking, no one--fish, foul or person--has been adversely affected by any waste water that was traced back to the plant. It’s too late to change the large assessment and the expenses locked in now, but I hope some changes can take place so that in the future the citizens can have a greater opportunity to determine the real need for such expenditures before any group of advocates, bureaucrats or politicians dictates to us what we need and what we are going to pay for.

WILLIAM BRANNAN

Ojai