This is the third lawsuit the environmental group has filed against the city over water quality issues.
By Olivia Damavandi / Staff Writer
The City of Malibu on April 8 was served its third water quality-related lawsuit from environmental group Santa Monica Baykeeper. In its latest suit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court last week, Baykeeper claims the city-approved Legacy Park Project violates state law by failing to meet water quality standards and by failing to adequately treat sewage, or wastewater, generated in the Civic Center area.
The city, however, claims that while plans to implement a wastewater treatment facility by 2013 are underway, the Legacy Park Project will provide storm water management to substantially reduce pollution in Malibu Creek, Malibu Lagoon and Santa Monica Bay.
“We want Legacy Park to be used for its original intended purpose: to treat wastewater and storm water,” Baykeeper Executive Director Tom Ford said Friday in a telephone interview. “In plain language, ‘take the poo out of the ”Bu’.”
The 15-acre Legacy Park, located along Pacific Coast Highway at Webb Way, which will double as a storm water treatment facility, was originally intended to treat wastewater as well, until the city in 2007 concluded from initial planning studies that it was not large enough to do so.
The elimination of a wastewater treatment from the park plans has caused environmental groups, including Baykeeper, Heal the Bay and the Surfrider Foundation, to revolt against the city’s plans to move forward with construction, especially after the Malibu City Council approved the park’s environmental impact report in a 3-2 vote in January.
Council members Pamela Conley Ulich and Jefferson Wagner voted to stall the Legacy Park Project until a plan could be devised to treat storm water and wastewater pollution at the same time, while Mayor Andy Stern, Mayor Pro Tem Sharon Barovsky and Councilmember John Sibert voted to move forward with park plans for storm water treatment only.
“I voted [to move forward with the construction of Legacy Park] right now because everyday we don’t build this park it’s another day of proven pollution in the water,” Barovsky told The Malibu Times in March.
Santa Monica Baykeeper sued the city for the first time in 2007 as a co-plaintiff with the National Resources Defense Council. The ongoing lawsuit accuses the city of violating state law by continually discharging contaminated water into Malibu Creek and by polluting the watershed around Latigo Point, which the plaintiffs say is a state-designated area of special biological significance.
To address the latest concerns, Stern said the city is planning on implementing a wastewater treatment facility at the La Paz property, located at the corner of Civic Center Way and Cross Creek Road where Papa Jack’s Skate Park is situated. The project is currently under developmental review by the California Coastal Commission.
However, in December of 2008, Santa Monica Baykeeper filed a lawsuit against the city for its approval of La Paz’s environmental impact report, which, Baykeeper claimed, failed to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with flooding, water quality and storm water runoff in the Civic Center area.
The lawsuits can be resolved if the city commits to building a centralized wastewater treatment facility, Tatiana Guar, attorney for Santa Monica Baykeeper, said, which it has “promised” to do since 2000.
“We’re done with the promising,” Gaur added. “The La Paz development agreement doesn’t say Malibu must build a wastewater treatment plan. It says they ‘might.’ We want concrete results, we want clean water. It can’t be clearer than that.”
The multiple lawsuits have frustrated city council members, who believe they are doing the best they can to meet all requirements to address water quality issues.
“We go to implement a wastewater treatment facility at La Paz, they [Baykeeper] sue us from doing that,” Stern said. “Then they sue us for doing this [attempting to treat storm water at Legacy Park]. Other than playing politics with the environment, I have no clue what they’re up to.
“The Regional Water Quality Control Board supports this project,” Stern continued. “What’s Baykeeper? A little organization suing people? It is appalling to me, all of this is disgraceful and in the name of politics.”
City deems lawsuits heighten costs, lowers outcomes
While city officials have expressed chagrin over the reasons for the lawsuits filed against Malibu by Santa Monica Baykeepr, they are also concerned about funding them. Stern said the city might have to use money intended for the wastewater treatment facility to pay for the lawsuits.
“Of course we’re concerned about cost,” City Attorney Christi Hogin said Monday in a telephone interview. “It look likes revenues in Malibu are down about a million this next year. It’s extremely expensive to fund lawsuits and it’s frustrating to both be sued claiming were not doing enough and then sued in effort to prevent us from doing more.”
Ford said the city lies at fault for the lawsuits. “I don’t control the budgetary conditions of the city,” he said. “The city can continue to fight us or make sure this gets taken care of. It’s the city that’s breaking the law.
“I’m here for clean water, I’m not here for anything else,” Ford added in defense of the lawsuits. “You can also tell [Mayor] Andy [Stern] he owes me $80,000 for the work we were doing there, helping the city clean up the pollution coming down Ramirez Creek.”