[Noozhawk’s note: Third in a series of commentaries on Los Olivos’ wastewater challenges. Click here for the first article, and click here for the second.]

If the Los Olivos Community Services District builds and owns a sewer system, it has tools to protect the community that no other entity has.

First, the district is conducting a parcel-by-parcel analysis — covering fewer than 400 properties in the service area — to determine the maximum wastewater generation permitted under current zoning for each lot.

It will then survey property owners about what development, if any, the owners are planning over the coming decades.

From that process, each parcel will receive a specific wastewater allotment, and assessments (how much each property owner will pay) will be based on those allotments.

The size of the pipe will be designed to serve that bounded capacity — not a pipe big enough to invite speculation.

Second, the Santa Barbara County Planning & Development Department has agreed that it will require “Can and Will Serve” letters from the community services district before issuing any development permit.

No letter, no permit. That is a powerful lever in the hands of the district board.

Third, the district can pass a resolution requiring that any proposal to add new users outside the district, or any existing user seeking more than their allotted capacity that cannot be offset through a voluntary trade with another parcel owner within the district, must go to a vote of all residents in the district service area — not just a board vote.

Voters in the community, not bureaucrats, would hold the key to any meaningful growth.

None of these protections would exist if control passed to the county.

This brings me to the hardest truth, and the one I most want Los Olivos residents to internalize:

If the community does not pass the required Proposition 218 assessment vote, this project does not quietly go away. It gets worse.

Every year of delay adds at least $1.5 million to the cost of the system. If the Prop. 218 vote fails, it will trigger regulatory escalation — enforcement actions by the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, potential cease-and-desist orders and fines against individual property owners, the kind of grinding legal trauma that destroyed community trust in Los Osos for three decades.

And eventually, the County of Santa Barbara could be compelled to step in and build a sewer anyway.

If the county steps in, cost rise significantly and the growth protections the community services district has built disappear.

The county is not obligated to size the pipe to Los Olivos’ current needs. The county is not obligated to limit connections to within the service area. The county cannot pass a resolution requiring a community vote before approving new users. The county would build what it needed to build, at whatever size made engineering sense, likely covering a much larger area than the Los Olivos district, with no mechanism to give residents a veto.

The community services district, by contrast, is Los Olivos.

Its board is elected by and accountable to the community. Its sole mission is to serve the district — no more, no less.

If you want a pipe sized for a small town rather than a growth corridor, the district is the entity that can deliver that. But only if the community supports it.

A $60 million project divided among roughly 400 parcels is a significant burden. The district is working to detail exactly what each property owner will pay.

The current thinking is to base costs on a combination of parcel size, zoning and usage. Larger parcels and heavier users would pay proportionately more.

Let’s be clear: The costs are not trivial. But consider the alternatives:

• Kick the can down the road while costs escalate by $1.5 million a year.
• Work with the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the county to develop a plan for implementing individual advanced on-site treatment units.
• Face cease-and-desist orders like Los Osos.

Current costs for advanced on-site treatment units for a typical home regularly exceed $100,000.

These systems require intensive maintenance, annual permits, regular pumping, demand substantial land area, and are simply not feasible for many of the smaller lots that make up the Los Olivos service area. 

The community services district is actively pursuing grants and other funding to reduce the community’s share of construction costs.

Working with Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara, the district has potential access to $30 million of Water Resources Development Act funding.

Even without grants or WRDA funding, a 30-year low-interest loan structures this as a manageable long-term investment in the community’s future, not a single unbearable hit.

Los Olivos has survived as a distinctive, authentic place for more than a century. Protecting that character — and the groundwater beneath it — is worth paying for.

Some have suggested that Ballard, or Dunn School, should be added to the system. These are understandable impulses, but they lead in the wrong direction.

Ballard properties are generally large enough to accommodate septic systems, and including either community would create delays, increase costs and raise Local Agency Formation Commission compliance issues involving noncontiguous areas unless the new service area drew a big circle around them all.

But then, a larger collection system requires a bigger pipe — and a bigger pipe is exactly what growth concerns are about.

The answer to the growth question is a system sized for Los Olivos, not one designed to serve a broader geography.

Los Olivos is, as I have said before, one of the most cherished communities in Santa Barbara County.

The small-town character that residents treasure did not happen by accident. It was built by people who cared enough to show up and fight for it.

The Prop. 218 vote, when it comes, is that fight.

Vote yes, and the community keeps control of its own future. Delay or defeat that vote, and control passes to voices outside the community that have neither the tools nor the mandate to protect what makes Los Olivos what it is.

The solution is here. It is practical, it is protective, and it is manageable. Los Olivos should take it.