Ahmanson Ranch Water Plan All Wet, Environmentalists Say

It’s a bold claim that seems to defy logic: Malibu Creek will be cleaner once Ahmanson Ranch, a new town of 3,050 homes, is built above the waterway.

That’s what developer Washington Mutual told environmental critics of the controversial project in a report released Monday. The 21-page document follows months of wrangling between Santa Monica-based Heal the Bay and former U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who was hired by the developer to promote the project.

The report asserted that Ahmanson Ranch, scheduled to break ground in 2003 at the eastern edge of Ventura County just north of Calabasas, will draw so much treated waste water from the Tapia sewage treatment plant downstream that it will actually divert a small amount of gunk from the creek.

Seattle-based Washington Mutual Inc. said that’s because the new suburb will need millions of gallons daily to irrigate its golf courses and parks--water that can be recycled from Tapia and pumped upstream.

“There will be less waste water flowing down Malibu Creek than if the project were not built,” Babbitt said. Storm water, too, will be collected and cleaned so that runoff won’t pollute the creek, he said.

But environmentalists condemned the plan as absurd. Heal the Bay branded it disingenuous and resolved to push for a more thorough environmental review.

“As far as how they’re going to manage their waste water, it’s a complete and utter disappointment,” said Mark Gold, Heal the Bay’s executive director. “As far as we’re concerned, it’s a broken promise. They’re trying to trump up an environmental benefit that does not exist.”

Biologist Calls Plan ‘Wishful Thinking’

The plan struck Rosi Dagit, a biologist with the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, as so unworkable that she broke into peals of laughter. She was particularly incredulous about the notion that Ahmanson Ranch could keep dirty storm water from harming the creek.

“Wishful thinking,” she said. “That’s pretty entertaining logic. It would be very nice if we could actually pull something like that off, but I think the likelihood of them not contributing to urban runoff in the upper watershed is a dream.”

Nine years ago, the project’s environmental impact report concluded that runoff from the development could further contaminate Malibu Creek with pesticides, motor oil and other pollutants.

Now, the developer promises to reduce pollution “to levels at or below existing conditions.” The feat would be accomplished with an array of storm-water detention basins, filters and grassy swales that would gather and treat rainwater.

As for waste water, Washington Mutual’s plan would alter the current system, by which water from toilets goes to a treatment plant and then, for half the year, to the sea.

Ahmanson Ranch plans to handle most sewage with its own treatment plant, which would supply reclaimed water for irrigation. But the new suburb’s grass would need more; that’s where the Tapia plant comes in.

Tapia is allowed to discharge treated effluent into the creek only during the winter. The treated water empties into the ocean at Malibu’s Surfrider Beach, one of the filthiest shorelines in Southern California. The area is home to two federally endangered fish species, the tidewater goby and the southern steelhead trout.

Likely Source of 2 Pathogens

Scientists point to Tapia as the likely source of giardiasis and cryptosporidium, two pathogens from human or animal waste found in Malibu Creek. During the dry summer months, much of the treated water is used for irrigation throughout the arid Santa Monica Mountains, but hundreds of thousands of gallons are left over each day.

Ahmanson Ranch hopes to siphon off that surplus for its own green expanses. The new calculations show that when the development is built out in 30 years, it will spare Malibu Creek about 350,000 gallons of treated waste water per day--a small fraction of the 9 million gallons Tapia now processes daily.

Gold said that the diversion plan would hardly improve the creek’s health--especially since Ahmanson Ranch would pump more than 200,000 gallons of sludge daily to Tapia.

“The promise they were making was that there was going to be no discharge to the creek ever,” Gold said. “I don’t think the public is going to buy the explanation of, ‘Oh, we’re just going to give our sewage to another treatment plant that’s going to pollute the creek.’ ”

Ahmanson spokesman Tim McGarry maintained that the project would help keep Tapia from improperly discharging excess water into the creek.

“We’re very earnest about this effort, and we think everyone benefits if the dialogue continues,” he said. “We share, at a very fundamental level, Heal the Bay’s concern for the watershed.”