Council member says the attorney for the owner of Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park, the Kissel Company, says city should be held accountable.
By Olivia Damavandi / Staff Writer
The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board in a meeting Friday was expected to increase, decrease or dismiss the $1.65 million fine it levied in February against the Kissel Company, owner of the Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park, for allowing, among other things, raw sewage spills into a local creek and the ocean.
However, due to questions regarding legal arguments, the water board chose to wait until its December meeting to make a final decision, Steve Cain, spokesman for RWQCB said Monday in a telephone interview.
The RWQCB issued a complaint in February that states the Kissel Company, headed by President Steven Dahlberg, failed to properly manage wastewater from its 72-acre property of 257 mobile homes, all of which are located within 1,500 feet of the ocean. The board also states that Kissel Company allowed 17 raw sewage spills into Ramirez Creek and the ocean between April 2007 and July 2008, disregarded regional water board orders to construct and operate an effective wastewater treatment plant according to prescribed schedules, and failed to submit groundwater-monitoring reports.
Under orders from the regional water board, Kissel began building a new wastewater treatment system more than five years ago. After the company missed its original completion deadline of November 2003, the board granted an extension. It was the first of many delays. Dahlberg said in November 2006 that the system would be completed a month later, but the job took nearly two years longer.
In November 2008, the first laboratory results from the new wastewater treatment system at the mobile home park indicated that the site was in compliance with water pollution limits.
The Friday meeting, which started at 9 a.m. and ended at 11:45 p.m., took place in Los Angeles and was attended by Malibu City Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich, City Manager Jim Thorsen, and Environmental and Building Safety Division Manager Craig George.
Conley Ulich, in a telephone interview Tuesday, said she was “interested” by the opening statement made at the meeting by Kissel Company attorney Garrett Hanken, who, she said, blamed the City of Malibu for the pollution.
“The lawyer’s opening remarks to the water board were that it’s not fair to hold the Kissel Company accountable when the City [of Malibu] has all the wastewater problems, and that the city’s rent control [laws] prevented them from being able to comply [with discharge standards],” Conley Ulich said.
Though Malibu adopted an ordinance for rent stabilization of mobile home parks when it achieved cityhood in 1991, Thorsen on Tuesday said, “The city has absolutely no authorization or jurisdiction over the [Kissel Company’s] waste discharge permit.”
Calls to the Kissel Company placed Monday and Tuesday were not returned before this paper went to press Tuesday evening.
“I think this should be a real eye opener for the City of Malibu because the next people on the chopping block will be us,” Conley Ulich said Monday during a city council meeting at City hall. “We really need to come up with solutions to water quality issues now.”
The city has faced its own fines and lawsuits regarding water quality issues, as well as 38 Malibu businesses that were notified in late April by the RWQCB that they were in noncompliance for violating wastewater discharge permit requirements.
Both Surfrider Beach and the Paradise Cove Pier received F ratings from Heal the Bay, which placed both ocean spots as well as Escondido Creek, Solstice Canyon at Dan Blocker County Beach, Marie Canyon at Puerco Beach and Castle Rock Beach on its annual Beach Bummer list for failing to meet water quality standards.
Both Conley Ulich and Thorsen declined to comment regarding whether they thought the Kissel Company should be required to pay the $1.65 million in fines.
“From our standpoint it just means the regional board is just enforcing what they’re supposed to be enforcing,” Thorsen said. “They are the enforcement and permitting arm for Paradise Cove and they’re just following their own rules and regulations.”