LAKE CASITAS : Plant Proposal Worries Neighbors

A proposed water treatment and hydropower plant below Lake Casitas Dam is alarming some area residents who fear changes to their quiet, rural neighborhood. Others are concerned about the plant’s cost.

About 20 people expressed their concerns at a Casitas Municipal Water District meeting earlier this week on the proposed $25-million plant, which would cost about $600,000 annually to operate. The meeting was held in Oak View to gather input on what issues should be studied in the environmental impact report and economic analysis of the project. The $117,000 report is expected to be released in November.

Richard Barnett, the district’s chief engineer, said the CMWD has exhausted all other ways to treat the lake water and must build the plant as soon as possible. The state Department of Health Services ordered the CMWD three years ago to meet state and federal water quality standards by 1992.

Sediment in the lake water, which is used for drinking water, has topped allowable levels for three months a year since 1988, Barnett said. The dirt and clay particles pose a health hazard because they insulate bacteria from the current chlorine disinfection method, he said.

The new plant would filter 32 million gallons of water a day. Pat Baggerly of the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County asked CMWD scientists to, among other things, keep ozone and other chemical discharges from the plant from polluting the environment.

Casitas Springs resident Barbara Garcia Weed said her neighbors are forming a task force to monitor the project’s studies. “The plant’s going to be sitting there basically in our back yard,” she said, voicing concerns about noise, heavy truck traffic, earthquake safety and wildlife disruption.

The water district sells water to 14 other agencies to serve 55,000 residents throughout the Ojai Valley, western Ventura and the northwestern corner of Ventura County.