For 22 years my NGO, Clean Water Now (CWN), has confronted our home, the City of Laguna Beach, regarding its chronic beach closures over Sanitary Sewer System Overflows (SSSO) that reach the receiving waters of the state, affecting recreational ocean lovers and fragile marine environs alike.
This sad history has included the constant posting of Fecal Indicator Bacteria (FIBs) signs, warning the public of California’s AB 411 listed exceedance prescriptions regarding storm/surface drainage polluting discharges. On any given day, it seems as if a beach somewhere in our city has these high FIB concentration signs posted on it.
It’s time the city realizes that some elastic thinking needs to take place.
Twenty years ago, the city annexed the LB County Water District via the Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission. LAFCO’s governing statute is the Cortese-Knox-Hertzberg Government Reorganization Act of 2000. Laguna officials and taxpayers should study this legal option in depth.
A recent example of how these reorganizations work to the benefit of both agencies is the nearly complete Santa Margarita Water District/City of San Juan Capistrano LAFCO certification process. San Juan Capistrano has had a mountain of problems with both their drinking and wastewater collection systems. Clean Water Now has been working in a collaborative manner with officials to assure a smooth merger next spring. The lead-in has created a lot of trust between the city and SMWD—a necessity for success.
CWN believes that the only long-term solution for our quandary is to revisit these past South OC analogs and mergers, consider this strategy, begin the conversation regarding consolidation, and start negotiating with SCWD as the easiest, relatively seamless annexation transition.
Both the water delivery and waste collection infrastructure should be transferred together, but at minimum the archaic, entropic SSS. Our water quality department employees would then become SCWD staff.
The recent SSSO was attended by a system de-watering, a temporary yet hugely gross volume, intentional discharge at Bluebird Beach to alleviate pressure, and involved the city sending out a distress signal to the highly skilled SCWD staff.
The two staffs are already collaborating and sharing services due to customer area overlaps, so SCWD is quite familiar with our SSS. Obviously, by the city’s post-Thanksgiving SSSO comments, we do not have the in-house expertise. Consolidation solves most of the city’s existing holes or deficiencies.
One critical element that should be included in such a LAFCO procedure: expand the SCWD board from five members to seven. Presently, the 5,000 residents of South Laguna have no representation on the board.
The city then completely divests—some creative fiscal crunching, some risk/cost assessment analyses plus complex negotiations take place. The solution is right there, next door, a very competent water and sanitation district friend we already know and work beside that takes on the heavy burden of properly rehabbing our decrepit SSS.
Laguna has an enormous backlog of deferred SSS maintenance, and with these disgusting yet preventable overflows added to our arguably under-performing storm water system, we can recover our stained image. All it will require is a City Council with vision, that acts boldly now, that understands we’re in over our heads, and more importantly, doesn’t unconscionably wait until the next major catastrophe to react.
Roger E. Bütow, Laguna Beach
