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Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District officials are “starting over” in their search for a new deep well site Wednesday, after protest from a Westside crowd wanting the county agency to look for a new plan altogether.
Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District officials are “starting over” in their search for a new deep well site Wednesday, after protest from a Westside crowd wanting the county agency to look for a new plan altogether.

Sanitation District To ‘Start Over’ On Chloride Plans

Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District officials are “starting over” in their search for a new deep well site Wednesday, after protest from a Westside crowd wanting the county agency to look for a new plan altogether.


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“The board clearly directed us to go identify a different site,” said Ray Tremblay, Sanitation District spokesman, “so we absolutely are not using the Stevenson Ranch or Westridge sites at all. They’ve directed us to go find a new place to go and implement the project.”

“We have to start over and find a different site, so it puts us back to square one on that part of the project,” Tremblay said. “We’re still making great progress on implementing the treatment part of the plan.”

Sanitation District staff now has “to start over and re-evaluate (the plans) with a clean slate,” Tremblay said, adding staff also is seeking to determine if another well site is even feasible.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, a state agency established by the EPA’s Clean Water Act that sets the standard for the amount of chloride -- or salt, and other chemicals -- that can be in water we send downstream, is overreaching with the 100 milligrams/liter chloride limit, Antonovich said.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, a state agency established by the EPA’s Clean Water Act that sets the standard for the amount of chloride — or salt, and other chemicals — that can be in water we send downstream, is overreaching with the 100 milligrams/liter chloride limit, Antonovich said.

District staff would know more after a new “initial study” is undertaken, which is a California Environmental Quality Act requirement, he said.

County Supervisor Michael Antonovich questioned a state water official on what he called the “arbitrary” nature of the chloride limit, and whether the county had the recourse to fight.

To that end, he even asked if the legal counsel who spoke on behalf of the corporate objectors of the well plan, such as Princess Cruise and Boston Scientific, if they’d helped litigate to the fight against the chloride limit set by the state.

“The is a case of regulatory agencies going above and beyond the regulations that those legislative bodies have set,” Antonovich said. “We’re trying to come to a reasonable solution while dealing with an unreasonable regulatory agency.”

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, a state agency established by the EPA’s Clean Water Act that sets the standard for the amount of chloride — or salt, and other chemicals — that can be in water we send downstream, is overreaching with the 100 milligrams/liter chloride limit, Antonovich said.

He argued the limit and subsequent costs to abide by the limit being put on Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District was onerous and amounted to taxation without representation. He also asked if the state board would hold a meeting in the Santa Clarita Valley.

“You have the right to face your accuser,” Antonovich said. “This is due process.”

Sam Unger, executive director for the state’s RWQCB, stated the board’s position — that scientifically tested data supported the 100 mg/l limit in order to repair salt damage to water in the Piru Basin in Ventura County, which is where Santa Clara River effluence goes after leaving local treatment plants.

While the Sanitation District has the ability to start over on the chloride treatment project, Unger said, the RWQCB would expect the county agency to abide by the schedule it agreed to in its last fine settlement.

The state board already granted the district a four-year extension for abiding by the chloride limit, he said, after district ratepayers rejected the Alternative Water Resources Management plan in 2010. Cost was the determining factor in the plan’s demise.

In 2012, SCV Sanitation District ratepayers were fined more than $200,000 for not hitting a previous schedule for the approval of a project to remove chloride.

In 2013, SCVSD staff released studies suggesting deep well injection — the pumping of excess chloride into a series of wells about two miles into the earth — would be the cheapest option.

However, an 11th hour change earlier this year due to a planning mistake by Sanitation District staff left the agency to use a site near the 16th hole of Valencia TPC. The land originally slated for the well project was denied due to a conservation easement by county officials put in before the well plan’s approval.

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Sanitation District To ‘Start Over’ On Chloride Plans

2 comments

  1. As Westridge homeowners, knowing that Newhall Land and Farm developed Westridge under the “Valencia Master Plan” promoting their standards of high quality of life only to turn around (as I understand) and provide the land for this deep well injection site is an absolute betrayal to everyone who bought their homes in this community. I am so thankful that both Westridge and Stevenson Ranch have outstanding HOA’s and that they brought this all to our neighborhood’s attention (just 3 weeks ago), and that we the residents stood together in stopping this just one week prior to commencement of the project. Thanks to all who devoted their time and efforts to stop this disasterous plan; and hopefully, the entire SCV will fight to keep these sites out of our wonderful valley completely.

  2. SCOPE opposed the deep well injection plan in 2012 when the facility plan EIR was released. We cited the legal obstacle of the conservation easement and our concern about the potential threat of seismic activity even prior to that in a letter on the Notice of Preparation, a year earlier. Our conclusion was that such a facility should not be placed under peoples’ homes. Our Board supported the brine line solution. If the Sanitation District had addressed these problems early on by moving the injection well away from homes, this would not have become the issue it is today. On the other hand perhaps it was better this way, since now substantiatal additional information about seismic activity has come out.

    We hope that this process has helped everyone to understand the importance of one of California’s landmark environmental laws. Approved in 1970, the California Environmental Quality Act requires the circulation of Enivormental Impact Reports and requires that agencies recieve and consider public comments. It requires that “mitigation measures” be developed to address impacts to the community and the environment. It also gives the public the right to litigate when the agency fails to disclose or consider impacts. Without this law, no one on the westside would know about the injection well or that it proposed to release 500,000 gallons a day of brine water under their homes. The agency would not have been required to give them time to comment and provide more information or have to repond to that information.

    SCOPE was formed in 1987 as an all-volunteer group of community members that reveiw and comment on EIRs. We are often berated for taking positions on behalf of the public during the CEQA process. So, all of our Board was very glad to see members of the Santa Clarita community come out and participate in the CEQA process to protect their neighborhood. Yea, westsiders!

    There are more unwanted proposals coming down the pike. We hope you will rmain vigilant.

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About Perry Smith

Perry Smith is a print and broadcast journalist who has won several awards for his focused, hyperlocal community coverage in several different regions of the country. In addition to five years of experience covering the Santa Clarita Valley, Smith, a San Fernando Valley native, has worked in newspapers and news websites in Los Angeles, the Northwest, the Central Valley and the South, before coming to KHTS in 2012. To contact Smith, email him at Perry@hometownstation.com.