Firms Muddy Water Deal for Beach Residents

The prospect of clear, fresh drinking water for Oxnard-area beach communities could suddenly get a lot more expensive.

A group of Channel Islands Harbor businesses has threatened to pull out of a much-touted agreement with the Port Hueneme Water Agency and instead get their water from Oxnard. Residents fear they could be left paying the brunt of increased water rates.

“This concerns me because the water project that is planned calculates [the harbor businesses] staying and it will cost a lot more money if they leave,” Silver Strand resident Victoria Finan said.

Elected officials from the nearby neighborhoods are holding a special meeting tonight to discuss delaying construction of a pipeline and a $16-million desalination plant until the dispute is resolved.

And they say they will sue the county, the owner of the harbor property, or the harbor lease holders if the lessees back out of the long-planned project--or force the lessees to pay a $3-million separation fee. The county owns the harbor property.

“The separation is not legally possible and it is a breach of contract between the district and the county,” said Gerard Kapuscik, general manager for the Channel Islands Community Services District, the group representing the elected officials. “We will use all of our resources to fight any attempts to separate.”

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But that doesn’t appease some residents, whose water rates were expected to double even before the harbor businesses threatened to pull out of the deal. The businesses account for 45% of water use within the services district.

“It is not a rational way to make public policy to say, ‘We are going ahead with this and if they don’t come with us, we’ll sue,’ ” said Lee Quaintance, a 14-year Silver Strand resident. “We keep imploring them to wait until the county gives an answer and the best answer they have for us is ‘We can’t wait forever.’ Everybody loses in a lawsuit. It is an absurd concept and should be used as the last possible resort.”

The services district--which provides water and other necessities for the harbor, Hollywood-By-the-Sea, Silver Strand and Hollywood Beach--committed years ago to a plan to improve the region’s notoriously bad water.

Now the Port Hueneme Water Agency is preparing to lay a pipeline and build a desalination plant to help bring high-quality water to the services district, the city of Port Hueneme and the Navy bases. The contract for pipeline construction is scheduled to be awarded the week of Aug. 5.

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County officials have been meeting with the services district to resolve the problem and have commissioned a study to look into the matter, but so far they have not made a decision on the fate of the harbor.

The water agency is prepared to go ahead with its plans, saying the project is too far along to be postponed and that the harbor businesses face several legal obstacles, in addition to paying a steep fee to offset costs.

The water agency was created two years ago to find an alternative water supply source for the coastal area’s 56,000 residents. Port Hueneme and the services district needed to find an alternative to their water supply, Kapuscik said, because existing water supplies from the Fox Canyon Aquifer are expected to drop 25% by 2010.

The best option, Kapuscik said, was to build a pipeline that would bring in water from the Calleguas Municipal Water District and the Metropolitan Water District to be blended with the treated water from the desalination plant.

One year ago, area residents began receiving pamphlets describing the benefits of the proposed project, saying they would be saving as much as $37 a month because they would not have to buy water softeners and bottled water.

Behind the enthusiasm for the project, however, the Channel Islands Harbor Assn. of Lessees was sending letters to the county, the service district and the water agency stating its displeasure with the high water fees the lessees were charged.

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Randy Short, spokesman for the lessees, said the district is charging the harbor area three times what the city of Oxnard charges.

For instance, Short said the typical restaurant owner pays about $300 a month in water bills while restaurants that use Oxnard water across the street from the harbor pay about $100 a month.

The businesses and the water district have not found a compromise on water fee reductions, despite intense negotiation efforts, Short said.

“For years we have been overcharged for water,” Short said. “We have been subsidizing the residential water users.”

Kapuscik said drought condition service rates resulted in higher fees for higher water usage, which impacted the businesses. But due to a 30% reduction in fee charges, the businesses have been charged equitable rates over the past year. He acknowledges, however, that Oxnard provides cheaper services.

All of this fuss comes at the “11th hour and 59th minute” when the water project is too far advanced to delay, Kapuscik wrote in a letter to the county. Also, Kapuscik said, the county is bound by a 1963 service agreement making the services district the water-service provider for the harbor. If the businesses there were to switch to Oxnard, there would be a hefty $3-million separation fee.

The water agency stands behind the services district.

“We don’t want to offend the lessees over their concerns,” said Douglas Breeze, Port Hueneme public works manager. “We requested them to make a decision many moons ago and we are now starting construction and they want to pull out. If they do, they are going to have to pay a cost.”

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Short said the businesses are not willing to pay a dime in separation fees.

The county is now in negotiations with the services district but a compromise has not been reached, Kapuscik said.

In the meantime, residents are left to wonder how the problem will be solved.

“A very small number of residents have tried time and again to understand and get all of the information,” said Bill Higgins, an environmental consultant and a 24-year resident of Silver Strand. “But every time you come to the critical questions about future rates they put the cloak of executive session over it.”