The county says the repaired water runoff treatment facility at Marie Canyon should alleviate pollution problems.
By Nora Fleming / Special to The Malibu Times
Heal the Bay rated the ocean water where runoff from the Marie Canyon drain, located off Malibu Road, empties an F. Residents fear for the health of children who play in water that runs from the drain to the ocean, and of pets that drink the water near the outfall. In fact, signs have been posted at the beach entrance by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health warning beachgoers that the water coming from the drain contains bacteria and may be unsafe to swim in, but these signs are not easily seen.
All this, despite the fact that a dry weather water runoff treatment facility had been installed at the site almost one year ago.
Polly Barrowman, a water quality scientist with Heal the Bay, said the organization gives water quality grades based on data obtained from monitoring agencies that test for three types of bacteria: total coliform, fecal coliform and e. coli. Water quality at Marie Canyon dropped from an A-plus rating it obtained in Nov. 2007 when the facility first starting working, to an F grade beginning March of this year.
However, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works says it has taken measures to mitigate the problem.
The treatment facility on Malibu Road (below Bluffs Park) was back up and running as of July 8, after being turned off for mechanical failures, said Mark Pestrella, assistant deputy director engineer for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.
The water quality improvement facility cost Los Angeles County $1.3 million and was designed by Clear Creek Systems to treat dry weather runoff up to 100 gallons per minute, reducing bacteria in the water, before flowing into the ocean at the Marie Canyon drain.
The beach area has made the Santa Monica-based nonprofit Heal the Bay’s Top 10 Worst Beaches list in California for the past two years.
The facility officially opened Oct. 11, 2007, but problems began to occur in Dec. 2007 following rainstorms, said Nathan Stevenson, county public works engineer.
The facility was a “casualty” of the canyon fires in October last year, which brought an excess of charred vegetation and debris that the facility was unable to manage, according to a Public Works press release from May 2008. Blocked pumps could not be cleared until new replacement pumps for the facility were ordered, and the facility was closed intermittently until officially closing on April 1.
“We take the lessons we learned from the fire and are incorporating those into the repair of the facility,” said Kerjon Lee, public information officer for the watershed management division of the county Department of Public Works. “Staff will be regularly monitoring the facility’s performance to sustain a high level of performance for the future,” said Lee, who added that Clear Creek Systems would send out crews on a weekly basis to check the system’s functioning.
Finger pointed at Mesa facility
Dan Hillman, a resident of Malibu Road, expressed his concerns about public exposure to the untreated water while the facility was not in operation. He said he has seen children and pets playing in and drinking from the drain runoff, which is located underneath a beachfront home.
One sign, on the front of the gate, cannot be seen when the gate is chained open, as it is during the day. The other sign is located on the back of the gate, which can only be seen when beachgoers exit the beach.
The Los Angeles Department of Public Health was not immediately available for comment on the signs.
Hillman said he had been in correspondence with the city of Malibu, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board and the county public works department to rectify the issue, but, he said, did not receive adequate response.
Lee said, to his knowledge, there were responses drafted in regard to the issues.
Barrowman said, “In this case, we know that the grades [at Marie Canyon] are bad, so rather than doing tests to confirm this we have spent our time working with the county to rectify the problem. [Los Angeles County] has rectified this by improving management practices and ensuring that they have backups [to fix mechanical breakdowns] for the future.”
Jennifer Voccola, Malibu’s environmental programs coordinator, said in addition to the facility’s stalled operation following the fall fires, the facility is not supposed to work during wet weather due to it only being able to process 100 gallons of water per minute. If there is an excess of that amount, the untreated water will go through the system and onto the beach.
Hillman said he has been watching the runoff while the facility was not in operation and noticed a constant, steady runoff that he believes should not occur during a dry season.
It is his theory that the Malibu Mesa Wastewater Treatment Facility on John Tyler Road, adjacent to Pepperdine University’s campus and Malibu Country Estates, which treats wastewater and supplies treated water to Pepperdine’s settling ponds for reclaimed use such as the campus sprinkler system, is contributing to the runoff coming from the drain.
Pepperdine and the Country Estates are both located within the drain’s watershed, according to a news brief from the county’s public works department about the system, but no tests have been run to confirm Hillman’s theory. The county runs the Mesa Wastewater Treatment Facility.
Lee from the county and Voccola from the city had no comment on Hillman’s theory.
This is not the first time Malibu Road residents and the city have charged that the facility is responsible for the poor water quality in the Marie Canyon watershed. In November of 2000, the city and Malibu Road residents hired an attorney to confront what they said was abuse of a permit to dump treated wastewater into the canyon’s waterway.
With the permit from the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the Mesa facility is legally allowed to release treated water down the Marie Canyon drain, if it has an excess amount of water.
While the drain leads directly to the beach, Voccola said, the water is “highly treated,” and these releases are only done in emergency situations and rarely occur.
Mesa Wastewater Treatment Facility water goes through an intensive treatment process, including exposure to radioactive light, said an unnamed employee at the Mesa facility, but, the employee added, it would probably not be wise to drink it. He said the facility processes roughly 70,000 gallons of water a day and will max out at 150,000 gallons, but it has not dumped water in the Marie Canyon drain for several years.