Chloride ruling in dispute

Ratepayers claim SCV Sanitation District misrepresenting judgment

Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District officials say they’ve found solutions to issues they were told to correct in a recent court ruling and are ready to adopt those solutions to keep their chloride-removal plan on track.

But the group that sued the district says it’s violating the court judgment.

“The Sanitation District is grossly misrepresenting what happened in court,” environmental lawyer Robert Silverstein said.

The district board has scheduled a meeting for 6 p.m. Wednesday at Santa Clarita City Hall at which it is expected to adopt revised environmental documents to deal with objections raised by appellate court Judge James C. Chalfont in his March 9 ruling.

The judge called for more studies on the effects of recycled water on an endangered species of native fish, district lawyers said, noting they would respond specifically to those concerns.

“The district prevailed on most of the disputed issues. ... The court found no fault with any of the chloride compliance

components of the project,” reads a statement on the district website.

That logic doesn’t wash with a group of unhappy Santa Clarita Valley ratepayers calling themselves the Affordable Clean Water Alliance. The group challenged the Sanitation District’s Environmental Impact Report filed with the 2013-approved chloride removal plan.

“The judge ordered the whole of the original EIR set aside and invalidated,” Silverestein said in an interview. “During the proceedings, he also made clear that this language is equivalent to use of the word ‘decertify,’ i.e., it means the district must decertify the original EIR.

“The court made clear that the original EIR must be set aside, not small parts of it,” said the lawyer representing the Affordable Clean Water Alliance. “There is no

parsing that. The Sanitation District is improperly attempting to defy a court order.

“The district is digging itself in deeper and deeper, and its actions make no sense,” he said.

The battle over how much chloride is discharged into the Santa Clara River by the Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District has raged for years, with the district trying first to dodge the requirement and then working to drive down the cost of complying with what state water quality officials say is a mandate.

Many have questioned the science behind the mandate.

An agreement was finally reached in 2013, but objections have continued to present themselves. The district is on a timeline and being monitored by state officials.

The district maintains the ratepayer group’s petition was only granted in two narrow areas — both pertaining to impacts on the endangered unarmored threespine stickleback fish.

District spokesman Bryan Langpap said the requirement for “new approval” of the environmental documents is not the same as “entirely new document” or “entirely new EIR process.”

The court finding a single deficiency in the EIR does not mean all analyses are deficient, Langpap said.

One way to do this is to remove the water reuse project component, which is independent from the other components related to chloride compliance, and certify the modified 2013 EIR, he said. That’s what the district board is expected to do Wednesday evening.

Within 30 days of the March 9 ruling, lawyers are expected to report back to Chalfont on how the district is complying with the ruling. District lawyers are expected to respond to the judge’s order before April 8.