Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Wastewater Regulation topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Council updates sewer-use ordinance and local pollutant limits to align with EPA and LA Water Board requirements
Summary
The City Council approved updates to the sewer-use ordinance and a technical local-limits study for the Hill Canyon Wastewater Treatment Plant, aligning municipal code and pollutant limits with EPA and Los Angeles Water Board guidance; the vote was 5–0 after a public hearing with no speakers.
The City Council on July 8 approved updates to Thousand Oaks’ sewer-use regulations and local discharge limits that govern what industries and businesses may send into the municipal sanitary system that flows to the Hill Canyon Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Paul Jorgensen, water-quality supervisor, told the council the sewer-use ordinance had not been updated since 2009 and the city’s local pollutant limits dated from about 1980. Federal and regional agencies recommended revisions to meet current pretreatment standards. The updates consolidate pretreatment rules into a single municipal-code article, revise definitions to match current EPA standards, add a tiered permitting approach for small or temporary dischargers and adopt new technical-based local limits based on an extensive evaluation and sampling regimen conducted for the plant.
Jorgensen said the city currently issues discharge permits to four industrial users — Amgen, Takeda, Skyworks and Teledyne — which are inspected and sampled on a regular schedule. The consultant’s technical local-limits study adjusted some pollutant limits (stricter for some contaminants, more lenient for others), added some new pollutant limits and removed others to protect the treatment facility and ensure compliance with Hill Canyon’s NPDES discharge permit.
The Los Angeles Water Board gave conditional approval to the city’s revisions pending formal council action; staff said the EPA-required 30-day public-notice period produced no public comments and that the local-limits report is documented in a technical report supplied to regulators. No members of the public spoke during the hearing.
Action: Councilmember Angler moved to adopt the local-limits and sewer-use ordinance updates; the motion carried 5–0. Ordinance titles executed at the meeting amended Title 10 of the Thousand Oaks Municipal Code (consolidating and updating sewer-use regulations) and adopted an uncodified ordinance adjusting water rates, discharge limits and related wastewater-division fees.
Ending: Staff will submit the council-approved ordinance changes to the Los Angeles Water Board for formal sign-off and continue implementation of the updated pretreatment program and inspections to protect the Hill Canyon treatment plant.
