Four people attended the Los Olivos Community Services District’s (LOCSD) August 13 meeting and heard the Board of Director’s initial discussion of how the cost of a “district-wide” sewer with a pipeline to Solvang will be allocated among district landowners.
Despite the board’s insistence that it is “required” by “regulators” to build a “district-wide” sewer, they have never identified a law, regulation, or other guidance from any agency requiring anything more than a project to address concerns raised by septic systems on very small lots and elevated groundwater nitrate levels.
Proposition 218, passed in 1996, requires that landowners share the costs of infrastructure projects based on the extent of the “special benefit” a project confers on their parcel(s).
Only about 130-140 of the LOCSD’s 372 parcels are in the township’s commercial core or among the neighboring small or constrained lots. Two groundwater monitoring wells under that area show impermissibly high nitrate levels.
Those 130-40 parcels would clearly benefit from an alternative to their aging septic tanks.
It is less clear that the remaining 230+ parcels (those over 0.5 acres, with functioning onsite systems, and/or not near elevated nitrates) are part of a “special problem” or would receive a “special benefit” from a large sewer project. It seems, instead, they might subsidize a project benefiting downtown parcels. Further, any approach that uses a parcel’s maximum development potential to calculate its “fair share” will encourage density, discourage agricultural uses, and virtually require development.
It’s time to right-size the LOCSD’s boundaries, project scope, and costs.
