Fine for Sewage Spill

Once the reader gets past the headlines touting the Regional Water Board’s puny $2.3-million assessment against Thousand Oaks for its February pipeline rupture that dumped 86 million gallons of raw sewage into the Arroyo Conejo, the reader is left wondering: Where’s the beef?

The board’s staff determined that under California law the potential penalty for this largest reported sewage spill in state history would be about $860 million. But the assessment proposed is in fact less than 0.3% of this amount!

This amounts to barely a nickel per flush. Also, the city was given a sweetheart five-year payment schedule into what amounts to an ambiguous “feel better” environmental do-good fund.

This piddling penalty will not serve as a deterrent to Thousand Oaks (or to the several other municipal sewage operators that also discharge into the Calleguas Creek watershed) nor will it cause there to be a permanent remedy for Thousand Oaks’ perpetual sewage spills.

The source of this grievous environmental pollution, the Unit W sewage pipeline, will remain within the Arroyo Conejo where it has polluted in the past and will pollute again.

The board should require Thousand Oaks to pull this troublesome sewage line completely out of the Arroyo Conejo and to replace it with facilities that would never again dump raw sewage into the Calleguas Creek watershed.

The pipeline replacement installed earlier this year has been spewing about 30,000 gallons per day of sewage undetected, without Thousand Oaks officials even knowing (or caring?) about this continuing environmental assault and insult.

As has been demonstrated repeatedly, Thousand Oaks can’t hang onto its own sewage and feels free to flush it downstream with impunity into wildlife habitat, farmland, Mugu Lagoon, the ocean and onto our beaches.

The Regional Water Board (though with much breast-beating) has shown a weak commitment to vigorous environmental enforcement against repeat municipal offenders. The board also appears blind to the problem and the needed remedy.

RUSS BAGGERLY

Meiners Oaks