City of CALABASAS April 12, 1995 TO: Charles Cate, City Manager K, FROM: Timothy Steenson, Building Offic SUBJECT: PRIVATE SEWAGE DISPOSAL SYSTEMS ON VALDEZ ROAD. Attached is a report of the general condition of the private sewage disposal systems serving the houses on Valdez Road and the affect these systems have on the slope, in which they are contained, that ascends north from the road, We have spent a great deal of money to repair this slope as a result of it's failure in the heavy winter rains of 1993 and we are ill advised to continue to allow the discharge from these private disposal systems into this slope land mass. In the report it is important to note that although at least two of the systems are in failure, all of the systems on this road contribute to the problem. While I agree that we need to take action to resolve the health issues associated with the two systems which can be identified as being in failure this action glone would not resolve the overall problem. Because the water table is so high in this area the effluents discharged into the ground are not afforded a deep enough layer of unsaturated earth to allow for the proper absorption filtration to take place. As indicated in the report, graywater discharge has been noted from all of the properties on Valdez Road which is an indication of the above described condition Regardless of the actions we take in the cases involving health issues associated with the discharge of insufficiently filtered effinents, we can not ignore the larger problem created by allowing the continued discharge of water into this slope. It is worthwhile noting that the recommendations contained in the report, except for a public sewer, involve the use of a designed filtration method (not dependent on natural earth filtration in the native soil) and dispersion of clarified discharge through a very shallow subsurface evapotranspiration system. Such systems allow for the filtered water to be utilized for irrigation purposes and then to evaporate or just to evaporate rather than the current systems which require the discharge to be absorbed by the already saturated soil Since conventional private sewage disposal system design is not a viable option in this area, we should consider how reasonable an action it would be to require the replacement of the two failed systems with one of these more expensive hybrid systems and not requiring some action of the Memorandumother contributors to the problem. The installation of a public sewer would require the same action of all of the residents in this area, would eliminate the discharge of a great deal of water into an active slide mass and would be relatively easy to do since we are currently working in the road anyway. Of course cost must be a consideration in any action we require but the range is so great that we should eliminate any of the options which we feel are not viable for other reasons as we will incur some design expense in investigating the cost of each option.