From the Publisher/Arnold G. York
So goes the old adage “Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.” For some in Malibu, getting what they wished for may not be really what they had in mind. That pretty much describes the position the more extreme end of the Malibu environmental community, which has spent an inordinate amount of time fighting the city and anything and everything the city ever proposes, finds itself in today. This extreme group suddenly finds itself in a terrible dilemma, concocted by the state and the Malibu City Council, and it’s not sure what to do.
Within the last few weeks, our City Council has done something you seldom see a council doing. What it has done is come up with a reasonably original idea, and put it into a reasonably original plan. And then the council has done something you almost never see-put the plan into action. The idea is for the city to buy the Chili Cook-off site, all 19-plus acres, smack in the middle of Malibu, and turn it into a water reclamation project, which is the official name. But what it really will be is a small sewage treatment plant with large holding tanks (really, small ponds) for holding the water after it’s been treated. Now before any of you panic and say, Oh my God, they want to put a sewage plant in the middle of Malibu, you ought to know that small sewage treatment plants (sometimes called package plants) have advanced with technology. They have really become very small and can be partially buried or landscaped in ways so you won’t even know they are there. The problem is not treating the sewage; it is what to do with the clean water after it’s been treated. The old solution would have been to just dump the clean water back into the ocean. Today, however, with the ocean having assumed semi-religious status among some, that option is not an alternative, unless you intend to beat the members of Heal the Bay senseless with clubs, as some of our more muscular brethren have suggested. That would be bad television and was ruled out as a possibility.
The reason the city is contemplating a water reclamation plant (their words since no one is ever allowed to mention the “S” word) should be abundantly clear to any of you with even a rudimentary sense of smell. Pretty much on any weekend, and on many a weekday, it becomes olfactory evident that many of our septic systems in the Civic Center area, and along the beaches, are not working to top efficiency. In fact, many don’t appear to be working at all. This fact has become so evident that the federal government, with the authority of the Clean Water Act and an alphabet soup of other federal laws, is pressing hard the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, the county and the city to fix all of it because it claims our effluent is a contributing factor in polluting the Malibu creek, lagoon and the surf zone. The Regional Water Quality Control Board is coming down hard on Malibu because the systems are failing and everyone wants action. Besides, it just hates septic systems, for reasons both real and imagined.
There are no real heavies in this battle, despite what many would like to believe. The systems are failing because Malibu is not, despite what some like to believe, a rural area any longer. Our intensity of use is growing and will continue to grow. Also, the population of the west Valley and the east Conejo Valley is growing, and the sewage and dirty runoff from those areas are headed our way, which means the Tapia treatment facility has to be bigger to handle the sewage. And all of it is complicated by the fact that we don’t plow holes in the beach berm often enough to let the dirty water out (to keep the surfers happy), which then raises the water table, encourages septic failures, and the entire Civic Center and lagoon ends up being one big petri dish, sitting out there in the hot sun. All sorts of stuffs just loves to grow in it.
What the City Council is proposing, providing we get the $25 million or so in grants to buy the Chili cook-off land, might just be the solution. The state likes it, the ocean enviros seem to like it and Malibu Bay Company owner Jerry Perenchio has apparently agreed to be a willing seller if the city can raise the bucks.
The local enviros are caught between a rock and a hard place. They’re the ones who wanted a Civic Center park and wetlands. The proposed deal is not exactly what they wanted but it’s damn close, and instead of saying thank you, they all went to the microphone at the special City Council meeting on Saturday and said, well, we’re not really against it, but on the other hand, we’re not really for it, blah blah blah.
It’s going to get interesting.