Parties to Meet in Waste-Water Dispute

Representatives of the Tapia Water Reclamation Facility are to meet today with state Regional Water Quality Board officials at the U.S. Court of Appeals building in Pasadena.

The facility is part of the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, which is appealing more than $187,000 in fines for discharging 78.8 million gallons of treated waste water into Malibu Creek in September and October.

The fines were levied on the water district rather than the facility, which processes up to 10 million gallons of water a day and serves 80,000 customers in areas including Agoura Hills and Westlake Village.

“[The facility doesn’t] have enough storage capacity for the excess storage water they are treating, so we issued two administrative civil liability complaints to Las Virgenes,” said Winnie Jesena, a senior engineer from the water quality board.

The illegal discharge, from Sept. 18 through Oct. 31, violated an order not to release treated waste water into the creek from May through October, when a natural sandbar builds up at the mouth of the creek. The order was aimed at preventing the Malibu Lagoon from overflowing into the ocean, affecting wildlife, water board officials said.

Two complaints were filed against the facility. The first carried a $70,000 fine for discharging 19.4 million gallons of treated waste water in September; the second, a $117,000 fine for 59.5 million gallons in October, water board officials said.

Norman Buehring, director of resource conservation at the Tapia plant, said rain in September made it necessary to release the treated water into the creek.

The water district is appealing, he said, because the discharge was unavoidable and had no adverse environmental effect.