The following was addressed to Todd Thompson, State Water Resources Board As a longtime homeowner in Malibu I have been reading about the proposed implementation of AB-885 with great interest. Malibu’s septic systems have long been a scapegoat for the polluted waters off our shores and a target of those who would wish to sewer Malibu to allow for greater density development.
While the principles behind AB885 may have the environment’s best interest at heart, the implementation for this bill would be an excessive and unnecessary burden on most homeowners. The vast majority of septic tank systems in Malibu are designed and function well. Most problems arise from uneducated homeowners who do not know how to properly maintain their septic system or are located on “wet beaches” at Las Flores, Big Rock and Tuna beaches.
Estimates for implementation of the newly proposed systems were reported around $50,000 but after doing some investigation we learned that this is the wholesale cost of the system, and after installation by an approved contractor the systems are likely to cost the average homeowner upwards of $90,000. With the current economic climate, especially in the state of California, the required expenditures are not feasible for homeowners.
Most importantly Bill AB-885 misdirects the focus of the cause of contamination from larger sources and improperly places the blame on individual septic systems. There are no homes along the course of Marie Canyon to blame as a septic system contamination source. The Malibu Mesa Wastewater Treatment plant is directly upstream from Marie Canyon, which has been ranked among the top five most polluted beaches in California for several years. It is no coincidence that this beach is so polluted, it is permitted to dump 2,000,000 gallons of effluent each year onto the sand at Amarillo Beach on Malibu Road.
State resources should be focused on large-scale sources of contamination like the Malibu Mesa Wastewater Facility instead of placing an unnecessary burden on homeowners that aren’t even responsible for the contamination. The other major contamination is at Surfrider beach at the receiving waters coming from the Las Virgenes sewage treatment plant up stream from the Malibu Canyon Dam.
The two foregoing sewage treatment plants are the present danger to health and public safety in the Malibu area. If clean water is the goal, both of these health hazards need to be fixed now. The relatively minor problems in the residential homes can be addressed once these major sources of pollution are resolved.
Daniel D. Hillman