District Fined for Release of Treated Water

In an ongoing dispute that may lead to penalties in the hundreds of thousands of dollars before it is over, the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District has been fined for illegally discharging treated water into Malibu Creek, state officials said.

Already facing a bill of more than $70,000 for releasing into the creek 19.2 million gallons of treated water from its Tapia Plant in September, district officials said Monday they would unavoidably commit even greater violations this month, due to what they call unfair state restrictions.

Expecting more fines, district officials said they will appeal the penalties and argue for looser restrictions at a California Regional Water Quality Control Board meeting Dec. 14.

The plant’s permit, approved by the state board in April, prohibits treated water from entering the creek from May to November each year in an effort to protect endangered species in the Malibu Lagoon and limit the levels of human waste entering the ocean, state officials said.

It requires the Las Virgenes district--which processes sewerage from residents of the San Fernando Valley’s western edge--to offer its highly treated water during that period to government and private agencies for use in irrigating parks, schools, golf courses and landfills.

District officials complain that complying with the new restrictions is sometimes impossible--particularly in cool fall weather, when there is little demand for irrigation water.

“We’re trying, we’re really trying,” said Norm Buehring, director of resource conservation for the Las Virgenes district.

Handling roughly 10 million gallons per day with limited reservoir capacity, the district’s storage can be overwhelmed by the volume of water it treats when its customers don’t want it, Buehring said.

The number of residents whose sewage the district treats has grown by 10,000 since 1988 to roughly 64,000, district officials said.

“We’re trying to use what storage we have and have even tried to offer no-cost water to public agencies to limit the number of days it would have to go into the creek,” Buehring said.

But when the weather gets cold, “nobody is interested,” Buehring said.

That was apparently the case in mid-September when the district released about a million gallons per day into the creek for two weeks. Due to light rainfall earlier in the month, the Tapia plant’s reservoirs were full, district officials said.

With more sewer water coming in and not enough customers interested in purchasing the treated water, the district was forced to release about 15% of what it processed into the creek to prevent structural damage to its holding tanks, Buehring said.

As part of its new permit, Buehring said, the district is also exploring building new storage space at its Tapia plant, which could prevent future overflows.

Though a state report concedes that no direct harm was done to the lagoon or its environment as a result of the September discharge, state officials and environmentalists chastised the district for being unprepared.

“This permit had been negotiated for over a year,” said Steve Fleischly, a legal analyst for Heal the Bay in Santa Monica, which monitors the pollution levels of Malibu Creek and the Malibu Lagoon. “They’ve known about [the restrictions] that long.”

Restricting flow from the district’s tanks between May and November is necessary to reduce the levels of pollution annually entering Surfrider Beach, one of the dirtiest beaches in the Malibu/Santa Monica area, Fleischly said.

During the summer, the beach is relatively clean because Malibu Lagoon traditionally shrinks then, breaking the Pacific Ocean’s connection to the lagoon and Malibu Creek, Fleischly said.

Treated water discharged during that period, however, reestablishes the link and flushes septic waste that has settled in the lagoon into the ocean, he said.

The effect shocks native species in the lagoon and beach--such as steelhead trout or the Tidewater Goby--and puts swimmers in danger, Fleischly said.

Given those effects, “the fines proposed are very modest,” Fleischly said. “It’s important the state sends a message to the district that this permit will be enforced.”