City Petitions to Halt Fine for ’98 Sewage Spill

The city is taking its fight over the 1998 rupture of a sewage pipe to the courts, hoping to avoid paying a record $2.3-million fine levied by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Board.

Jeffrey Dintzer, a Los Angeles attorney representing Thousand Oaks, filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday challenging the penalty, arguing that the city could not have anticipated the heavy storms that caused the pipe’s failure.

“Indeed, the events leading up to the washout were unavoidable,” the petition said.

If the city is successful, a judge could direct the regional water board to throw out the fine.

Last month, the State Water Resources Control Board upheld the multimillion-dollar penalty.

The fine was levied in August 1998 after the rupture of a sewer pipe in February that sent 86 million gallons of raw sewage into the Arroyo Conejo and, eventually, the Pacific Ocean. Twenty-nine miles of public beach from Malibu to Oxnard were closed for weeks.

The pipe failure and circumstances leading to it are also the subject of an ongoing federal probe.

Southern California experienced an unprecedented amount of rainfall from December 1997 through February 1998, which caused catastrophic mudslides and flooding throughout the region, Dintzer said.

An attorney for the regional board could not be reached for comment Friday.

But in a memo dated Oct. 27, 2000, the state water board’s chief counsel said that regional board members didn’t believe the city did everything it could have to prevent the problem.

The City Council is expected to discuss the case Tuesday.

Councilman Ed Masry has said he thinks the city should continue fighting the fine, despite the fact that close to $1 million in public funds has already been spent on attorneys’ fees and experts.