Seaside Lagoon’s season is saved

The Seaside Lagoon lifeguards, known affectionately as the Slugs, will be back at work this summer. Photo

The Seaside Lagoon will open again this summer after the city won an unexpected reprieve from the regulatory agency that had previously threatened up to $21 billion in fines for past water quality violations.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board last week agreed to the city’s terms for the continued operation of the Seaside Lagoon’s saltwater pool. The LARWQCB on Wednesday issued a four-year “Time Schedule Order” that includes a temporary relaxation of water effluent standards as the city seeks to find a way to make the nearly 50-year-old facility comply with newer environmental law.

City officials were happily shocked. The city had received no indication that an agreement was still under consideration.

“It came out of the blue,” said City Manager Bill Workman. “It went through the fax, and I went, ‘What the hell is this?’”

Mayor Mike Gin said the new order came as an extremely welcome surprise. He called the lagoon’s saltwater pool one of the harbor’s most singular attractions.

“It’s so unique,” Gin said. “Where else in the world do you have a seaside park lagoon with a sandy bottom that takes in ocean water, that is a safe environment…It really is a unique, historical part of our city, and we are just thrilled the Regional Board recognized that.”

Debbie Smith, LARWQCB chief deputy executive officer, stressed that the city still needs to address water quality concerns that have plagued the Seaside Lagoon.

“We do expect the city to continue to diligently work and bring this facility into compliance,” Smith said. “It’s been a number of years, and they need to confront this issue and solve it.”

The City Council only two weeks ago moved to suspend operation of the lagoon’s saltwater pool indefinitely. It appeared, at the time, that the pool might never reopen. The city and the water control board, after nearly a decade of often contentious relations, had reached an impasse.

The city’s previous agreement with the water control board – which oversees the water quality of the lagoon’s water outflow into the ocean – had expired. The regulatory agency sought to tighten standards, and city staff was alarmed when a water control board presentation showed the city faced a potential civil liability of $21.2 billion for water quality violations. The proposed fine was the minimum allowed, $150,000.

Recreation and Community Services director Mike Witzansky said that the city had to take the billion dollar figure into consideration. He noted that BP Petroleum faces a maximum civil liability of $78 million for discharging 2.3 million gallons of oil into the Gulf Coast while the city faced a $21.2 billion liability.

“That, to me, is the irony of ironies,” he said.

At the Council’s April 27 meeting, Councilman Steve Aspel accused the control board of “eco-green overkill” and said that the city would not be blackmailed. The council voted unanimously to close the saltwater pool. They also launched an advocacy effort that included a letter-writing campaign and a “Save Seaside Lagoon” Facebook page, administered by Gin, which attracted more than 2,800 supporters.

The city contended that the Seaside Lagoon was a unique facility that was being held to unfairly stringent standards. The lagoon, built along with the harbor in the early 1960s, uses ocean water that is taken in by the AES power plant. The city chlorinates the water after its use by the power plant for cooling purposes, and then returns the water de-chlorinated to the ocean.

At issue is the amount of “total suspended solids” – sediment that makes water murkier – in 2.3 million gallons of water the lagoon returns to the ocean daily during its 100 days of seasonal operation. The water board has fined the city for multiple violations of this standard. The city, in a study required under the previous Time Schedule Order, showed that “TSS” levels were only six percent higher in the outflow than in the water taken in. Meanwhile, the city argued, the city’s chlorinization process rids the water of bacteria and thus, overall, makes it cleaner.

Councilman Steve Diels, who has been among the water board’s harshest critics, said that the regulatory agency appears to have finally been swayed by the city’s argument. He said a LARWQCB staff contacted the city in recent weeks and asked a pertinent question: where does the lagoon’s water come from?

“They were finally asking the basic question – the water comes from the harbor and goes back into the harbor,” Diels said. “Maybe they finally got it…We will continue to try to seek a permanent solution, but in any case, I think the control board finally got it that they are holding us to a standard that doesn’t make sense for the nature of this water body.”

The new Time Schedule Order was not actually issued by the board itself, but instead issued administratively by executive officer Tracy Egoscue. Smith said the action was not entirely uncommon and occurred because the board would likely not have been able to address the lagoon’s issues until at least September. She said the agency was aware of the public outcry over the closing of the saltwater pool and did not want the pool out of compliance through the entire summer season.

“We understand many of the local residents really value this facility and it has significant value for the community, but our main concern, and our responsibility to the people of California, is to make sure people and the aquatic life are all protected,” Smith said. “We need to balance the needs for the facility with the need to have it be in full compliance, as well.”

Workman said he believed the advocacy campaign may have caught the water board’s attention.

“I’m not sure they were up to having 2,000 kids in bathing suits and towels at the next meeting,” he said. “I say that a bit facetiously, but there were people talking that way.”

Witzansky said that the new agreement contains almost everything the city asked for during negotiations earlier this year. The agreement begins on May 10 and runs through September 10, 2013.

“This is really a victory,” Witzansky said.

Gin expressed gratitude for city staff’s efforts and the work done by his colleagues on the council’s lagoon subcommittee, Diels and Councilman Bill Brand. He also thanked his new Facebook friends.

“I have to tip my hat to almost 3,000 Facebook fans who have joined Save the Seaside Lagoon group,” Gin said. “It was unbelievable how many people weighed in support of the lagoon, and it was heartwarming to see how the lagoon has touched a lot of lives over the years…I think it really made a big difference for us, as well.”

Witzansky said the city hopes to open the lagoon by its traditional opening day on Memorial Day weekend, although preparing and staffing the facility in such short order may not be possible.

“We are taking steps to get ready to go and hopefully have the ability to open the doors as historically scheduled,” he said. “I’m not quite sure yet we have the capacity to get that done given the short turnaround.”

While the immediate future of the lagoon appears to be secured, its long-range future is still uncertain. The city has estimated replacing the pool with an impermeable, fresh-water pool would cost $12 million. To do so would also take away the essential character of the facility, which attracts 90,000 visitors annually and is often used as a safe introduction to ocean water for young children.

Diels said that the solution to the lagoon’s future is more likely political rather than physical.

“It doesn’t make sense to turn the seaside lagoon into a freshwater pool right next to the ocean – it’s a waste of water and of energy and its hugely expensive,” Diels said. “The beauty of the lagoon is its simplicity and its safety, and we want to preserve that…There is no desire to weaken the Clean Water Act, but there is no desire to make a mockery out of it by holding the lagoon to freshwater standards. Now we have time to find out how to make the lagoon a functional body within the law.”

Diels said something positive may come out of the lagoon’s recent travails.

“I have a feeling it’s going to be one of the anchors in the future of the harbor,” Diels said. “Whereas it had sort of been taken for granted. When we remodel it and it’s nice and cleaned up…It’s going to be phenomenal. So I see a bright future. It’s worth fighting for.” ER

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