Drilling in on Who Should Pay for the Los Olivos Sewer Project: The 6-year Saga Continues

Please check out a community member’s informative letter to the editor, published yesterday by Noozhawk.

The Los Olivos community’s engagement in deciding whether we need a sewer system for the entire district is crucial.

In 2018, the Los Olivos Community Services District was formed, and five board members were sworn in to address the perceived need to replace aging and failing septic systems on the 390 parcels within the district’s boundaries.

Today, six years later, many neighbors share concerns over escalating assessment fees and escalating costs of professional services, projects, planning and studies totaling approximately $1 million in taxpayer dollars.

There are also concerns that a large system will lay the groundwork for unchecked sprawl that will pave over our bucolic town.

At the same time, the existing business community clearly needs more restrooms. Addressing the aging septic concerns by starting with the downtown commercial property owners has obvious advantages.

“The lots in the downtown core, on average, generate more wastewater effluent,” according to the Santa Barbara County Environmental Health Services’ Los Olivos Wastewater Management Plan from 2010.

The district board’s last proposal, unveiled in 2022, included construction of a sewage treatment plant.

The proposed site for the sewage plant, located outside the district and complete with effluent ponds and 24-hour lighting, raised a host of concerns.

The farther away the treatment, the more expensive it gets. Costs for engineering, construction, environmental review, and operation and maintenance for such a large project are estimated to be well more than $100,000 per parcel owner.

While owners would have to pay that cost in the form of increased assessment fees, every parcel owner would also be required to pay up-front and out-of-pocket for their lateral connection to the deep, gravity-fed sewer system.

After repeated neighbor complaints and concerns that such a large and expensive system did not seem warranted, the elected board finally listened, stepped up and agreed to perform groundwater testing six months ago.

Even before the groundwater monitoring data started to come in, there were warring factions about the size of the problem and the size of the solution. Ultimately, the debates come down to “Who should pay?”

The controversies have devolved into mistrust, with threatening messages mailed anonymously, neighbors stopping talking to one another, attacks on people’s character on social media, and a board that views with suspicion donations for a sound system that will help elderly community members hear what is being said during public meetings.

Is there hope for a unified path forward, or is Los Olivos on track to become the next Los Osos? The answer might lie in the results of the groundwater testing.

Nitrate Levels

Groundwater Testing Results Presented at LOCSD’s April 2024 General Meeting

Fifty years ago, the tiny, historic town of Los Olivos was designated a “Special Problems Area” based on 1974 groundwater monitoring data showing the potential for increasing nitrate levels.

It is important to note that wells within Los Olivos were not showing levels exceeding the maximum contaminant level for nitrates, but the concern was that, because Los Olivos was on septic tanks, it was very likely that the nitrates in the groundwater under Los Olivos would continue to increase to dangerous levels.

It is important to acknowledge that the presence of high levels of nitrates in groundwater is not just a concern, it is a significant threat to our health and the health of our environment.

The maximum contaminant level for nitrates in groundwater is 10 mg/l.

Just last month, the results from the district’s five new groundwater monitoring wells were presented to the public.

Three of the wells show levels well below the MCL of 10 mg/l. The other two wells (near the downtown core) reflect nitrates at 11 mg/l. That is one point above the MCL.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the MCL for a contaminant is based on the MCLG (maximum contaminant level goal), which is “the maximum level of a contaminant in drinking water at which no known or anticipated adverse effect on the health of persons would occur, allowing an adequate margin of safety.”

In other words, there are no known or anticipated adverse health effects — none — when nitrates measure at or below 10.

So, the Los Olivos Special Problems Area has two wells with nitrate readings at a single point over the MCL, but it seems reasonable that one point means that the readings are still well within the “margin of safety.”

Questions arise with the first of the two wells showing nitrates at 11 mg/l is at the very northeastern corner of the district’s boundaries, and the second well with an 11 mg/l located immediately south of that first well.

In fact, the test results leave many with the impression that the groundwater is already contaminated with slightly elevated nitrate levels when it enters Los Olivos from the north, and it is leaving the district to the south far cleaner.

The scientific consensus is clear: Aging septic systems are not the sole, or even the primary, source of nitrates in groundwater.

Nitrates enter groundwater from various sources, including septic systems, animal feed lots, agricultural fertilizers, manure, industrial waste waters and landfills.

Community members are beginning to question whether the path forward might include revisiting whether residents living inside the district’s boundaries — those who have already paid several years of district assessment fees for this undertaking — should now be able to look to other sources to help remediate contamination that is very likely not generated by residents of the township.

In other words, if sources north of the district are causing the nitrate levels in two of the town’s monitoring wells to exceed the MCL, that could alleviate a lot of the pressure on the owners of the 390 parcels inside the district’s boundaries to solve the problem with a large sewer system and to pay for it all on their own.

The next general meeting of the Los Olivos Community Services District is scheduled for 6 p.m. May 15 at the Los Olivos Grange Hall, 2374 Alamo Pintado Ave. Please attend.

Michelle de Werd
Los Olivos

Link to the letter on Noozhawk’s website: https://www.noozhawk.com/from-our-inbox-letters-to-the-editor-for-the-week-ending-may-3-2024/