District May Restock Ventura River, Avoid Fine

Water quality officials are set to decide next week whether the owners of an Ojai sewage plant should be allowed to restock the Ventura River in lieu of paying a fine for an accidental chlorine spill that killed thousands of fish.

But a local environmental group says a state agency’s proposed settlement does not make “biological sense.”

The Los Angeles Regional Water Control Board is proposing the Ojai Valley Sanitary District replenish the river with about 2,000 fish or other aquatic life similar to those destroyed in the accident. The Sept. 23 spill killed about 2,600 fish.

The water control board is scheduled to consider the plan at a meeting Monday.

The board’s plan would be in lieu of all but $980 of a proposed $56,535 fine against the Ojai district. The tiny district could have been liable for up to $555,550 in penalties--$10 for each gallon of chlorinated water that is estimated to have spilled into the river.

“We’re not going to contest it,” said Eric Oltman, district general manager. “We have had accidental discharges in the past, but in general they have been isolated and we have not been fined.”

The district, which serves 12,000 customers from Shell Road in west Ventura to eastern Ojai, has an annual budget of less than $4 million.

The mishap occurred as the district was starting the first phase of its new $27-million water-treatment plant. The facility, which is about 75% complete, is supposed to improve the quality of the water the district discharges into the river.

But Mark Capelli, executive director of Friends of the Ventura River, characterized the proposed administrative remedy as “ineffective.” The stretch of river where the spill occurred has long since been repopulated with fish, he said.

“Planting the fish doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said. “That doesn’t give us anything we don’t already have, which is thousands of fish in the river.”

Instead, the group wants the district to do something that will have a lasting benefit for the river. It suggests either removing plants near the river that are squeezing out native vegetation or replanting a section of riverbank the district damaged two years ago during emergency sewer line repairs.

Officials with the regional water quality control board could not be reached for comment Tuesday.