Tana Lampton's submission to
California Regional Water Quality For Aqua Dulce Town Council

Loaded 05/01/97 01:17 PM

California State Water Quality Control Board Meeting, Ventura County, April 7, 1997

Good morning, Board and Staff. I, along with Mr. Howard Carlip, represent the Agua Dulce Town Council (Under the Charter) today.

We would like to acknowledge and thank Staff, in particular Wendy Phillips and Debbie Smith, for their help and patience. Their suggestions for an Education Task Force, their ideas for volunteer well-testing, and everything that helped flesh out this program, were most helpful.

Since I have spent eighteen months on Formation Committee for Town Council, and helped write the Charter (for Town Council), was elected to every Council (with the exception of one year) to the present date, and have been involved in the Ground Water Issue since 1980, I can say, with due modesty, that my opinion is listened to.

We, along with other environmentally aware groups, such as SCOPE (Santa Clarita Organization for the Preservation of the Environment) and "Friends of the River" (the Santa Clara River forms Agua Dulce's southern boundary), want to protect the groundwater. Most residents of Agua Dulce moved there to live in harmony with nature, and are highly sensitive to Groundwater Protection.

Our Town Council has become alarmed at the obvious lack of progress to protect and monitor groundwater. The Chair of the Water Committee, Lillian Smith, and her group, has been working on this issue for eight years and have accomplished nothing.

In 1996 the Council passed two resolutions opposing waste-water treatment systems and water supply systems, which mirrored the community's opinion. This was accomplished over, alarmingly, the objection of the Chair and her Water Committee group.

We then became even more alarmed as Ms. Smith and her group then commenced the most outrageous actions at the time of the November Elections (1996) by printing their own ballots, controlling the polling places, admitted to opening locked ballot boxes (and taking them out), and other actions.

Prior to elections, the Agua Dulce Town Council instructed Ms. Smith to prepare a SURVEY or OPINION POLL to the community, which became, under her control, a binding resolution to tax, which the Town Council cannot do! She disobeyed the Town Council every step of the way, countermanding the Council's decision.

These actions are coupled with the fact that Ms. Smith provides a newspaper, distributed free to every resident in town, making the community a "captive audience".

We have a program here; the other group has nothing. Their goal appears to be to do nothing, and to force you, the Board, to establish a moratorium, which they believe can then be used to convince the community to vote for a sewer system.

In closing, we have asked Mr. Charles Brink to assist us with some comments today. As an engineer consultant we remind you that, in 1989, he put together a coalition of community members and developers to produce the Interim Plan, approved by your Board, for Acton, California.

We are the Town Council. We will continue in our efforts to get this program going and to start testing wells.
Tana Lampton, Agua Dulce Town Council (Under the Charter) 1996-97.

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