Thousand Oaks Fined $2.3 Million for Sewage Spill

After listening to nine hours of testimony from city staffers, experts and lawyers, regional water quality board members on Monday socked Thousand Oaks with a $2.3-million fine for a massive winter sewage spill--the largest such penalty in state history.

The huge fine is a staggering blow to Thousand Oaks, which hired a high-powered defense team to shield the city from state and federal investigations into the February pipeline washout. That spill, during a series of powerful El Nino storms, unleashed 86 million gallons of raw sewage into Arroyo Conejo en route to the ocean 17 miles away.

City Council members have scheduled a closed session for this afternoon to decide whether to appeal the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board’s fine to the State Water Resources Control Board.

“Obviously, we’re disappointed with the board’s decision,” said the city’s lawyer, Robert C. Bonner, a former federal judge. “There are so many [flaws in the decision] that it would take me too long to say them. I can think of a lot of things that were weak.”

Members of the environmental group Heal the Bay said the multimillion-dollar fine was apt because the sewage spill, which took place over 12 days, was the largest in the area’s history.

“We’re very pleased,” said Heal the Bay lawyer Steve Fleischli. “It was clear they tackled a difficult issue head-on. . . . This sends a strong message that [the regional board] can no longer tolerate environmental problems.”

In a unanimous decision, the Regional Water Quality Control Board structured the fine to be paid over five years. Most of the money--$2.2 million--should dedicated to local projects, such as monitoring beach pollution or cleaning up the Calleguas Creek watershed, the board members decided. The remaining $100,000 is earmarked for a state cleanup fund in Sacramento.

Although the board members could have raised the fine to as much as $860 million or erased it altogether, they approved the exact amount recommended by their staff earlier this summer.

A federal investigation into the sewage spill is ongoing.

The state regulators reached their decision only after a lengthy public hearing at Camarillo City Hall, complete with slide and video presentations, testimony from a handful of experts and comments from residents.

During the packed hearing, board members heard conflicting accounts of the events leading up to the spill.

The water quality board’s executive officer, Dennis Dickerson, said the city had ample warning that its sewer pipeline was vulnerable to catastrophic failure. He argued that the line should have been on “suicide watch” because of a past history of breaks and warnings voiced in a series of nervous memos from city staffers.

“We often talk of a troubled child or a troubled relationship,” Dickerson said. “Here we have a troubled pipeline.”

The city’s defense team countered that the pipeline failed after a “tsunami-like” surge of water crashed down the Arroyo Conejo. The rainstorm amounted to an excusable “upset” of the waste-water system for which the city should not be held liable, Bonner argued.

He said Dickerson’s timeline of a few past breaks was misleading because previous spills occurred elsewhere in the system and one was the result of vandalism.

“These things sound pretty good when you throw them up on a screen,” Bonner said. “In reality . . . the City Council was not on notice. The City Council never knew, Public Works Director Don Nelson never knew, that there was a significant danger that the sewer pipeline would wash out.”

One after another, the city’s witnesses argued for no fine at all--or at least for a reduced penalty.

Nelson said his memos urging the City Council to approve a $75-million waste-water treatment plant upgrade--which included replacement of the damaged pipeline--were taken out of context by the regional board staff.

City consultant Richard Bardin, an engineer, said the pipeline would not have been replaced in time for the February deluge even if the waste-water plant upgrade had been approved just at the time it was introduced, in late 1995. Regardless, the council deadlocked on the matter for two years.

Councilwoman Judy Lazar argued that the fine would be unfair to taxpayers, who are now paying $10.4 million to replace the pipeline, twice the amount originally anticipated.

“Imposing any such large penalty, in effect, would be unprecedented, unjustified and an extremely severe punishment,” Lazar said before the board members began deliberations. “I’d urge you to be very careful in your consideration.”

The city also has set aside $675,000 to pay Bonner’s firm, retain separate lawyers for two council members and to reproduce documents for investigators.

It is likely that council members will be asked to raise resident sewer rates to pay for the legal fees, the fine and increased pipeline replacement construction costs, although the general fund could legally be tapped for some of the cost.

Despite previous indications that the hearing testimony could delve into acrimonious City Council politics, the topic rarely surfaced Monday.

Testifying reluctantly at the request of city lawyers, Lazar only briefly touched on the council’s inability to muster a four-fifths vote for the water-water plant upgrade.

Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, who routinely voted against the fee hikes necessary to perform the upgrade, did not make good on her promise to attend the hearing. After consulting with lawyers, Zeanah said she decided not to attend to address politics at the meeting, even though she feared her colleagues were making her a scapegoat.