Malibu spends $107,000 to study beachfront sewer assessment Play

Will Malibu allow beachfront fire house owners to tax themselves for building a sewer?

The city council last night approved spending $107,000 to study setting up an assessment district to tax beachfront owners for the proposed PCH beach sewer. The idea is that building a sewer would be cheaper than every house building its own wastewater plant.

But if all goes well, it would take until the year 2032 to finish the sewer line. People who want to rebuild and move back in would have to build an onsite wastewater treatment center, and then remove it to connect to the sewer.

Dean Wenner is an oceanfront fire victim. Wenner told the city council last night it is going to take so long to build the beachfront sewer that the costs may make it cheaper to go without it.

"The reality of it is when we get done with this, if we proceeded to a point where we get through phase 1, we will see that it's almost a wash, between the cost of this effort and what owners would have to pay to meet it," Wenner said. "And there will be some other negativities about it too. The other issue is about who specially benefits from it. Again the surface: it seems like a nice thing to help us out with rebuilding, but there are other people and agencies especially who would benefit from this far more than any of us who would be rebuilding."

The project would be expensive. $8 million just to propose the assessment district — money that would have to be fronted by the general taxpayers, at a time that the city is broke. The assessment district could be voted down, leaving the rest of the city holding the bag to pay for the assessment district study.

And then there's the issue of years and years of construction on PCH. The sewer would not be completely finished until the year 2032.

Council member Haylynn Conrad asked if voters in the western part of the city would have a vote on the sewer, just like the assessment district members.

"When you do the stakeholder meetings, it's not just the affected area of the western side of Malibu," Conrad said. "It's also the western side because they're gonna have to drive into town. I don't know how long construction is going to take — if it's four years of construction. I don't know what putting a sewer in the PCH is going to be like."

And there is already substantial opposition growing to the PCH sewer. Council member Bruce Silverstein:

"I am not an advocate of the sewer. I think there's all kinds of problems, notwithstanding the potential benefits. I don't believe it's going to materially benefit a material portion of our residents who lost their homes. I think it's more likely going to benefit the people who are going to be buying these lots, and building on them down the line. And I don't have any appetite to make it easier for other people for this."

And there was also tentative support for building the sewer. Council member Marianne Riggins says the people who live along the beachfront should have the opportunity to install the sewer, which might become a requirement anyway.

"If the property owners decide to vote this down, they vote it down, I mean, that's a form of democracy," Riggins said. "We're giving them an option to as a possible way to rebuild their homes without ever having to worry about their septic system failing or having a problem with the state regional water quality."

But Riggins has been around City Hall and around the Malibu coastline for a long time. She predicts the State Water Board is going to order people along the coast in eastern Malibu to put in sewers, one way or the other, sooner or later. And that means a much larger sewer system, serving hundreds of houses outside the beachfront fire zone.

"I mean it could just be a matter of time before this section of PCH is gonna have to be sewered regardless eventually," Riggins said. "I think the state is going to eventually take the bite of the apple on this one anyway."

One other issue: the proposed PCH sewer district may only have pipes and pump stations large enough to handle the outflow from houses that are rebuilt after the fire. These pipes may not be big enough to send sewage from other beaches down to L.A. if the state orders sewers.

Last night, the council voted to go ahead and spend another $107,000 on possibly setting up the assessment district to study the PCH sewer. The $107,000 will be paid by residents across the city, not just on the beach.