2 Sewage Districts Fight Over Costs at Treatment Plant

Like dung beetles at war, two water and sanitation districts in Los Angeles and Ventura counties are waging a legal battle for what most people are content to flush into oblivion.

For more than 35 years, the districts have shared a single plant near the Santa Monica Mountains where what gets pumped from 80,000 toilets is converted into recycled water and fertilizer.

But now, two years of disagreements over spending practices have escalated into a court battle. For two months, officials have been trying to work out their differences in mediation--so far without result.

The 600-acre battleground consists of meadows surrounding pools of sludge equipped with bright blue life preservers for those who might need to be saved from an undignified drowning. Rows of barbed wire wind around the $150-million sewage treatment plant, which sits just off the Ventura Freeway in Calabasas.

Against the coastal scrub backdrop where “MASH” TV show helicopters once bobbed, 10 million gallons of sewage are recycled daily into water for farms, golf courses and the plant itself, as well as for an on-site “bark park,” where dogs play, squat and otherwise perpetuate the sewage cycle. It takes 15 hours to process one gallon of water.

The fight began when the two districts--Las Virgenes in Los Angeles County and Triunfo in Ventura County--decided to push the limits of waste treatment technology in 1990. The engineers’ eyes gleamed with visions of producing something greater than plain old recycled water/fertilizer. They wanted to be among the first in the world to use a relatively new method for converting waste into fertilizer. And why not? The process would eliminate the usual odor and, they hoped, make a profit.

In 1994, they opened a $50-million, hacienda-style plant just three miles away. “[Las Virgenes] is very proud of it,” said Triunfo General Manager Bill Smith.

There they began combining “heavy solids” with wood chips and storing it in huge piles.

Las Virgenes secured a contract to sell the compost at local Home Depot and other home improvement stores. They also invited customers to ride up in their trucks on Saturday mornings, grab a snow shovel and take bags of the stuff home for free.

Things hit a glitch about a year ago, when a group of homes was built just a little too close. About 50 Ventura County residents living downwind began complaining of an “overwhelmingly pungent” smell. They filed a lawsuit alleging “emotional, physical and economic” pain.

“You can . . . make it as pretty as you want, but it’s still a sewage treatment facility,” Las Virgenes General Manager Jim Colbaugh said with a shrug.

Residents said they couldn’t take a stroll outside and were embarrassed to invite friends over for coffee. Their kids developed allergies, they said.

“The irony is, before there was a composting facility, there were no complaints,” Las Virgenes attorney Keith Lemieux said. “We used to just spread it all over the ground.”

The suit was dropped after Las Virgenes invested in a $1-million air freshener called a “biofilter,” which essentially absorbs the smell produced by the process of making fertilizer. Las Virgenes, which controls 70% of the partnership, sent Triunfo a bill for 30% of the price tag. The district also billed Triunfo for a share of the $1.8 million it cost to buy buffer property around the plant.

That’s when things got really messy.

Facing bills for $1.5 million, Triunfo officials marched into court saying they were never consulted about what they saw as a spending spree. Some board members grumbled that “people in Ventura are cost-conscious, and people in L.A. aren’t,” Smith said.

This was met with a countersuit: Las Virgenes wanted to dissolve the partnership and gain control of the plant.

The court documents were riddled with emotional language more common to divorce papers. There were “irreconcilable differences and disputes” and a lack of “mutual confidence and trust necessary to continue.”

Triunfo officials worried that if Las Virgenes ended up with the plant, Ventura County customers would have to pay more for the plant’s services. They had their own proposition: to dismantle the entire plant and cart off what belonged to them.

When the case landed in a Ventura County courtroom at the beginning of this year, the warring districts were told by the judge to sit down and try mediation.

For about two months, the districts have been working through their “communication problems” and financial disagreements. They’ve debated the future of composting and biofilters. But the real showdown will probably come in a couple of weeks, when they finally broach the subject of the bill Triunfo refuses to pay.

And although Triunfo officials say they hope a settlement can be reached, Las Virgenes officials are cautious. If talking doesn’t work, Colbaugh said, the two sides will go back into court.

Seeing nothing funny in the prospect of a blockage in negotiations, Colbaugh said soberly, “We may have reached an impasse.”