The L.A. Regional Water Quality Control Board asserts its authority on the application approval process for the development on Civic Center Way.
By Olivia Damavandi / Assistant Editor
Long pending plans to build the La Paz shopping complex in the Civic Center area were further delayed last week, after the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board issued an order that forbids the issuance of a wastewater discharge permit for the project.
The order, issued during the water board’s Feb. 3 meeting, is a response to an appeal filed last year by project developer Malibu La Paz Ranch, LLC, challenging the regional board’s ruling that the project application is incomplete.
La Paz Attorney Tamar Stein at the hearing said the project application is complete by law under the Permit Streamlining Act, which requires that development project applications be reviewed and their completeness determined within 30 days of submission. The appellant states it submitted the application and all required documentation on Dec 2, 2008, but did not receive any response from the LARWQCB until after Jan. 2 of this year.
“We are most definitely not here to determine whether our application is complete. The time to do that has long since passed,” Stein told regional board members. “Once the project was deemed approved as a matter of law, it doesn’t matter whether the application is complete or not. It doesn’t matter whether the staff still feels that documents were submitted promptly or submitted fully enough.”
Stein’s statement raised the eyebrows of some board members, who said it influenced their vote to deny a discharge permit.
“I have to say that the biggest mistake that you’ve made has nothing to do with your project,” LARWQCB member Francine Diamond said to the La Paz developers. “It has to do with your challenging the board’s authority by coming before the board staff and saying, ‘Aha! We’ve already got our application!’
“There’s no way that I would vote to withdraw our authority to regulate water quality,” Diamond continued. “It’s too bad that you had to go in this direction when I think you were on the right road to creating a [waste discharge report] our staff would think is sufficient.”
The order and the appeal will be reviewed by the State Water Resources Control Board, which may dismiss them or direct the regional board to reevaluate the project application before taking further action. Hearing dates for these items have not yet been set.
The La Paz developers have been struggling to get the project approved for the past 10 years. In November 2008, the Malibu City Council approved both an 112,000-square-foot and a 99,000-square-foot version of the La Paz project, which would be located at the intersection of Civic Center Way and Cross Creek Road. Both plans include a collection of retail, restaurant and office buildings ranging in size from 6,000 square feet to 17,000 square feet. The larger option requires a coastal development permit and is pending approval by the California Coastal Commission, but the smaller one does not.
The larger version includes a donation of 2.3 acres of the parcel and $500,000 to the City of Malibu for “any municipal purpose,” including a wastewater treatment facility.
Though the application includes a conceptual Title 22 engineering report, which details the capabilities of its proposed wastewater treatment system, the regional board staff states it is incomplete because it lacks a final engineering report approved by both the regional board and the Department of Public Health.
“My staff has indicated to me they still have concerns whether or not this facility will impact or degrade the water quality in that area,” Tracy Egoscue, executive officer of the LARWQCB, said at the hearing. “But this is a legal argument over whether or not this discharger can write their own permit.”
The regional board last week also adopted the order to reinforce its recent decision to ban the use of septic systems in the Civic Center, due to its assessment they are polluting Malibu’s watershed, and pressure the City of Malibu to implement a sewer for that area.
The septic ban cannot be enacted without approval from the state water board, which has not yet set a date to discuss the matter. Since the state board has not yet ratified the prohibition, La Paz developers and some city officials say the regional board jumped the gun by denying the project a discharge permit.
“The law is crystal clear: there’s not a [septic system] moratorium until it is reviewed and approved by the state board,” Don Schmitz, head of Schmitz and Associates, Inc., the development consulting and land-use planning company representing La Paz, said at the hearing. “That has not happened yet.”
City officials are also concerned with the progress of the La Paz development, as it is one of few locations that can house a sewer in the area.
“The [regional board] needs to be working with the city in trying to help us implement a sewer system in the Civic Center,” Mayor Pro Tem Jefferson Wagner said in a previous phone interview. “To implement [the order] that soon without the state board giving appraisal I think is immature and unfair to the city.”