SEWAGE CONFLICT COULD END SOON WATER BOARD, DISTRICT OFFICIAL EXPECT TO HAVE A SETTLEMENT.

Byline: JIM SKEEN Staff Writer

LANCASTER -- A conflict might soon come to a head between state water regulators and sanitation district officials in Lancaster and Palmdale over whether enough progress is being made with orders to keep sewage off Air Force property and to clean up nitrates in groundwater.

At issue are two cease-and-desist orders issued by the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board -- one to the district in Lancaster to keep sewage off Edwards Air Force Base land and another to the district serving Palmdale to clean up nitrates in groundwater.

Lahontan officials are questioning the delays in complying with their orders, including two-year slips in major construction projects proposed to resolve the problems.

Officials for the sanitation districts call the timetables set by the orders unreasonable and have challenged them in court.

Settlement negotiations, which could lead to new compliance schedules, are in progress.

``We believe the intense part of negotiations will occur in mid-October,'' said Harold Singer, Lahonton's executive director. ``We should know very quickly whether there is a settlement or if we are hopelessly deadlocked.''

Singer said he anticipates a settlement or some type of enforcement action in early next year.

``We will fish or cut bait by the first quarter of '07,'' Singer said.

Officials for Los Angeles County Sanitation District 14, which serves Lancaster, and District 20, which serves Palmdale, say they are progressing as fast as they can and that the delays have been from factors outside their control, including weather and unforeseen technical issues in design and construction.

``These projects are very complex, very large, and growing in costs,'' said Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford, who sits on the board of both districts. ``We will get our arms around this thing.''

Ledford said he anticipates a settlement being reached and new schedules set.

Lahontan hired a consultant to study whether the districts' claims of difficulties in design and construction are valid. That report should be completed within a few weeks, Singer said.

In 2004, Lahontan issued a cease-and-desist order to the Lancaster district to stop treated sewage from spilling into Rosamond Dry Lake at Edwards by fall 2008.

At the same time, Lahontan issued a cease-and-desist order to the sanitation district serving Palmdale, directing that it stop nitrate discharges into groundwater by fall 2009.

In response to the orders and to what officials saw as a pressing need to handle growth, both districts developed 20-year plans that called for constructing new ``tertiary'' treatment plants -- whose output would be safe for human contact -- and storage ponds.

Schedules for the completion of both treatment plants, however, have been pushed back by two years, with Lancaster now slated to be online in 2010 and Palmdale in 2011.

Both districts have made progress. In Lancaster, the district has completed the design for the treatment plant and a pipeline has been completed that will be used to carry treated water to agricultural fields.

In Palmdale, the issue is groundwater quality -- in particular, stopping nitrates, a pollutant that can cause a condition known as ``blue baby'' syndrome among infants.

Nitrates have leaked into the underground water table from Sanitation District 20's decades-old practice of spreading treated sewage on farming operations and barren land to soak into the ground.

The land spreading has been stopped and the district has added more acreage of agriculture to which the treated effluent can be applied.

The Palmdale district also has installed six extraction wells to pull out nitrate-contaminated groundwater.

james.skeen(at)dailynews

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