LOS OLIVOS COMMUNITY ACTION FOR LOCAL CONTROL
LOCAL Control fully supports a sensible, informed, prompt, economically sound, and local plan for building a right-sized sewer system and sewage treatment plant in Los Olivos.
What We Know So Far
For years, the Los Olivos Community Services District (“CSD”) made public promises and SPENT PUBLIC MONEY on the voter-approved Local Phased Approach for the town’s septic-to-sewer project.
The Local Phased Approach was endorsed by the Regional Water Quality Control Board, Santa Barbara County Environmental Health Services, 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann, the Santa Ynez CSD, the City of Solvang and a majority of Los Olivos Residents. The Local Phased Approach was focused on funding and building a “Phase 1” wastewater treatment and reclamation plant to be totally enclosed in a “barnlike structure” and located on .5 acres in or adjacent to the downtown commercial core.
In or about June 2021, with no public notice, workshop, or other discussion of the change, the CSD Board abandoned the Local Phased Approach. Since then, the CSD has since been scheming to fund and build a sprawling sewer system and large, open-air sewage treatment plant that will encourage and promote precisely the development, density and sprawl the CSD assured voters it would prevent (think from north of the 154 and down to Ballard… and beyond).
Timeline of Events
“The Los Olivos CSD held public workshops in May, June, and July to define the nature and scope of the town’s septic-to-sewer project. In the June workshop, the public was educated on why the “Local Phased Approach” is the correct approach for Los Olivos and how it would have, among its many benefits, the ability to recharge the groundwater (by injecting clean water into the aquifer) in the contaminated “bullseye” of the dense, downtown Commercial Core.”
“The public was informed that the Local Phased Approach had been selected and would be embodied in the Project Description that would guide the Los Olivos CSD’s efforts for the septic-to-sewer project and be used to obtain grant funding in support of the Local Phased Approach.”
“By unanimous resolution, the Los Olivos CSD adopted a Project Description that was “consistent with the presentations and input from the citizens of the District, the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the County Environmental Health Department.” The Resolution states that all the CSD’s efforts were “to be consistent with the Project Description.”
The Project Description expressly provided for studies into and the expenditure of public funds in support of “Phased Collection and Treatment” that would develop and build a system and treatment plant for the downtown Commercial Core with
• “[s]ubsequent phases into adjacent high-density areas [to] be determined by the results of groundwater monitoring” and
• “[p]otential expansion of the collection system, as with the treatment system, will be determined based on results of the groundwater monitoring and in coordination with the RWQCB.”
”
What We Do Not Know Yet
WHAT MOTIVATED the CSD to abandon the Local Phased Approach as described in the Los Olivos Community Wastewater Program Project Description the CSD adopted by Resolution in August 2019.
By WHAT AUTHORITY the CSD tripled the size of the project and began to spend public funds in pursuit of that vastly larger project in June 2021.
WHY, during the CSD’s March 9, 2022 General Meeting, the CSD Board Members tried to deny that they had abandoned the Local Phased Approach.
What YOU Can Do
Attend CSD Meetings
Check the calendar to see upcoming meeting dates.
Write to CSD and County Supervisor Joan Hartmann
Ask questions, request options, and demand accountability
Join LOCAL Control
A group of community members interested in holding the CSD accountable to local residents and interests.