State Parks Official Clarifies Timeline of Malibu Lagoon Drainage Plan

As the overhaul of the Malibu Lagoon is expected to get underway in some form this week, officials connected with the project provided some insight into a drainage plan under fire by critics of the project. 

Opponents of the Malibu Lagoon Restoration Project, including the Malibu City Council, have laid out concerns about the dewatering plan and its potential impact on the health of surfers and swimmers at the nearby . The term dewatering describes the process of pumping or evaporating water, usually at a construction site.

Suzanne Goode, a State Parks Senior Resource Ecologist, said the plan will not be put into practice for another three weeks or so, depending on several factors at the . 

Mark Abramson, a senior watershed advisor at the Santa Monica Bay Foundation, which has provided funding for the project, said many variables have to be taken into account for the dewatering plan, which is being reviewed by an independent engineer.

"We've got so many different variables here. It's dependent on the weather this year and how much rain we got, when that rain came, how many people are using toilets in the [Malibu] Colony, how many people are flushing the toilets over here that feed the ground water that we're literally going to have to pump out, whether the lagoon is open, whether the lagoon is closed," said Abramson, who has been working on the project with State Parks since 1997.

He added that the variables were always laid out generally in the plan, which is part of a permit already approved by the California Coastal Commission. 

"It was always known that the contractor would then have to describe how they are going to have to move water around the site and get it into our treatment system and they are going to have to evaluate the capacity of that treatment system," Abramson said.

He added that the plan has many moving parts.

"It is actually literally a requirement of the permit that the engineer has to submit those documents to our engineers so that we can say, this meets the necessity of the job," Abramson said.

He said the plan has to be drawn up as close to the start of the dewatering process as possible.

"[The contractor] couldn't have done it already," Abramson said, adding that two weeks ago the lagoon was open, and now it is closed.

"We want them to do it as close to the project as possible and it has to be done that way or you can't have an effective way of moving the water around the site," Abramson said.

According to Goode, the contractor, Ford E.C., Inc., was only assigned to the project a few weeks ago. 

"He wasn't going to spend a lot of time working on it until he knew it was assigned," Goode said, adding that conditions at the site will determine when the actual dewatering will begin. 

She added that beach access will be available during the entire project.

"Once the contractor has built the dike that closes off the channels from the main lagoon, then the access will be across the top of that dike. There will be beach access at all times. There will be parking at all times. The whole parking lot will not be available to the public, but as much of it as we can make available," Goode said.

Craig Sap, state parks' Angeles district superintendent, said the dewatering plan will be released to the public once it is reviewed. 

Malibu City Manager Jim Thorsen said he has met with Sap and wants to look at the plan and possibly provide further comments. 

A regional water board official told the LA Times any new plan would be looked at to determine if a new permit is needed.