The county Fire Department’s requirements would cost new homebuilders who would have to pay for water servicing infrastructure up to $1 million.
By Paul Sisolak / Special to The Malibu Times
The City of Malibu needs to form a special assessment district to upgrade local structure fire protection water supplies that are too costly for property owners to pay on their own, according to a Malibu Chamber of Commerce director who led a town hall meeting Tuesday night on the matter.
The meeting at Pepperdine University, was sponsored by the chamber to bring to light the problem many landowners are now facing: they aren’t allowed to build on their own lots until they to pay for the costly water tanks and piping to meet required water flow by the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Waterworks District 29, which services Malibu, says it cannot provide the infrastructure.
Chamber board member Don Schmitz said at the meeting that the district does levy capital improvement fees, though they pay for maintenance and repair – not for the installation of water mains, piping and storage for new residential building sites.
He also cited a 1998 study from the L.A. County Department of Public Works that stated the water district was more than $108 million deficient in its water flow infrastructure. That figure, Schmitz said, would more likely be $150 million today. Water District 29, unlike the neighboring Las Virgenes water district, doesn’t have its own master plan.
Water Works District 29, Schmitz added, experiences on average a 6.3-percent water supply loss, totaling more than 173,612,000 gallons per year.
Schmitz said Malibu property owners recently surveyed by the chamber who applied for infrastructure upgrade services to meet the county fire department’s requirements, were invoiced anywhere from $200,000 to $900,000 for installation fees for which they would be responsible.
Using Carbon Mesa property owners as an example, Schmitz said by enacting assessment fees, they would provide an approximate 40 property owners with their own 10-gallon tanks to supplement an existing 200,000-gallon municipal tank. It would leave the area with more than 600,000 gallons of water with no direct cost to the owner.
Chamber Chairman Roger Gronwald said the city needs to act fast because a rehaul of the water fire protection infrastructure in Malibu could take more than a decade.
“It’s got to be a long-term solution,” Gronwald said. “We’re looking at 10-years plus.”
City Manager Jim Thorsen said the city council would formally place a discussion of the assessment districts on its May 23 meeting agenda.