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Why is Charles Brink involved in Agua Dulce sewage?
April 24, 1996
It is twofold
The simple answer. If Agua Dulce is forced to put in a sewage treatment plant, Acton will be forced right behind them, because if Agua Dulce needs sewage treatment, then Acton does. This would make LA County and the pro growth element very happy and that would then sewer the entire LA County, from downtown Los Angeles to the Kern County line. I am very involved in Acton and do not intend to see Acton sewered. I am concerned about Agua Dulce, that it be kept rural, and I will spend considerable effort to help keep the community from sewers until someone convinces me that the community wants sewers.
I believe in rural living and have assisted various communities in their efforts to keep control of their communities. Urban sprawl and greedy land developers have their paid local lobbyists masquerading as "concerned citizens". These "concerned citizens", read paid lackeys try to make sure that the actual community who clearly wants to stay rural is denied any possible help. They attempt to lie and play personality games to divide and urbanize the community.
In summary the actions are as follows
Conclusions
Conform A-1 zoning
Conform leach fields to the current law
Eliminate dairy farms
Eliminate illegal
disposal of sewage.
Expand the Agua Dulce Community Standards District
Limit number of horses per
acre
Limit the amount of
animal wastes per acre
Manure
Other farm
animals
Essential mitigation matters to reduce nitrates in the rural communities of Acton and Agua Dulce.
1. Conform leach fields to the current law.
Enforce the existing LA County rules on any new construction, that leach fields must be four feet above historic high water level. This would prohibit leach fields in floodplain areas and the 50 deep commercial cesspools (which are really in effect sewage injection wells). This will stop the direct liquid coupling between sewage and the water supply. These laws are on the books now and require no change except to force the County to enforce their own laws.
2. Eliminate illegal disposal of sewage.
All of the illegal septic systems have to be found and eliminated. Typically these are rental trailers and other structures violating the LA County zoning code and the Agua Dulce Standards, which calls for only one residence per property and for a 2½ acres minimum parcel. These units range from dumping the sewage directly out into a pit on the ground, or digging in a barrel and dumping in the sewage and letting it overflow onto the ground. These are unsanitary, unsafe and dangerous. Some people would justify these rental trailers by saying they need the money to make their living.
When one realizes these rental trailers may mean that everyone in the community would have to spend $60,000 to $150,000 to connect to a sewage treatment and water system. This means those who rely on the small added income of rental trailers are so marginal that they will lose their property.
Their self interest in making a few dollars instead of protecting the environment will cause hundreds to lose their properties. These illegal rentals need to be shut down to save the people in the community who are following the law. Again, no laws need to be changed, because these units are currently illegal.
3. Limit amount of animal wastes.
A portion of Agua Dulce is still zoned as A-2, which allows many uses which will contaminate the ground water. For example A2 allows specifically without permits:
An unlimited number of animals on a ten acre parcel.
Feedlots wherein the animals can be put shoulder to shoulder,
Stock sales lots which are similar in use to feedlots, and most incredibly,
Manure spreading grounds where the manure is spread on the surface and allowed to percolate into the groundwater.
Remember animal wastes are nitrates just waiting to go into the water table. As there are no feedlots, stock sales yards, or manure spreading areas in the community, changing the law to require a CUP or just banning them should not affect any property owners and have no effect on existing land uses. It would require an act of the Board of Supervisors to eliminate these uses within communities that are dependent upon groundwater such as Acton and Agua Dulce.. These restrictions to eliminate nitrate sources could be added to the Agua Dulce Standards District and the District expanded to cover the entire community as defined by the drainage basin.
In A-2 zones, dairy farms are permitted. Dairy farms are major sources of nitrate pollution and air pollution due to the methane produced by the manure. In a rural community the right to keep a cow would seem to be reasonable. But a limit on the number of cows per acre must be set and the amount of nitrates produced per acre limited to prevent damage. This could also be dealt with by a recommendation that if they exceed a certain number of cows per acre that the manure would have to be held in storage in an impervious structure/container, and then trucked out of the community and not disposed of on the ground or allowed to leach into the ground.
5. Limit number of horses per acre.
Current A-2 zoning allows eight horses per acre on parcels exceeding one acre. This would means a parcel conforming to the Standards District could have twenty horses. Unfortunately the nitrate production would again be the equivalent of some 120 people per parcel (one horse equals about six individuals). A lessening of the number of horses per acre allowed is important along with the same provision as discussed with dairy animals and cows, that if you exceed this number you would have to haul away the manure. Both of these changes would require Board of Supervisors action to change the A-2 zoning code and/or add restrictions to the Community Standards District.
6. Expand the Agua Dulce Community Standards District.
As this study covers all of the drainage basin for Agua Dulce, it would seem important that the Community Standards District should be expanded to cover the same contiguous area because the Standards District can be the vehicle to provide these restrictions to protect the ground water. The Acton Standards District covers the Acton drainage basin area and would provide no areas that were not protected. Action required: Board of Supervisors to expand the area.
Again, the A-2 area allows chicken ranches, and other types of ranches with unlimited amount of nitrate output. These could be solved in the same way of restricting the total amount of nitrate generated per acre and requiring, if they exceed the number, having the manure trucked off the property into an approved disposal site out of the groundwater basin.
8. Conform A-1 zoning to the same limits.
Some of the same problems but less, because the A-1 does not allow many of the heavy uses such as feedlots, manure spreading, unlimited poultry and is more restrictive. On the other hand, the A-1 configuration is too restrictive on people who want to keep pigs for 4-H projects because it restricts the pigs to two weaned pigs maximum. This could be expanded in rural communities to allow more. Further, from an animal standpoint, both A-1 and A-2 are limited to only three dogs and three cats on a property. This is also inappropriate because many people have more cats and dogs than that. The County continues to forget the problem that cats are necessary around animals to keep the mice population down, and think of cats only as pets as opposed to working rural animals.
It would seem that a community effort could be put together and possibly a grant obtained to process the manure from the animals into fertilizer and then reutilize that fertilizer as organic fertilizer.
It would seem that the idea to limit nitrate pollution would be lessening the amount nitrate produced per residence. It could be done by determining the nitrate production of humans, animals and fertilizers and have a limit per acre.
It would be impractical to eliminate the number of people in the family, because it would violate peoples’ personal freedom. A change could be made to eliminate some A-2 commercial uses such as boarding homes, room rentals (unlimited residents), large group homes (up to twenty custodial residents) and other homes which are actual bushiness. It would seem reasonable to have a limit established to protect environmental water table.
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