Voters Reject Sanitary District Consolidation

A longstanding effort to consolidate four of the six districts within the Sewerage Agency of Southern Marin suffered a sound defeat in a special election Tuesday, with nearly 62 percent of voters rejecting the merger. The measure needed more than 50 percent support in each of the four districts to pass.

With just 30 percent of voters turning out for the special election, residents of the Almonte, Homestead Valley and Richardson Bay sanitary districts were squarely against consolidating the districts into one, while voters in Alto were split on the measure.

“We expected it to be defeated,” said Almonte Sanitary District Chairman Kevin Reilly. “We’re happy it’s over, and at least three of the four districts have defeated it." 

In Almonte, 52 percent, or 169 voters were against the consolidation. In Homestead Valley, 55 percent or 299 voters rejected it, along with nearly 66 percent or 1,308 in Richardson Bay. Alto was evenly split, with 70 people voting both for and against.

For consolation to be approved, at least 50 percent of voters in all four districts needed to vote in favor of it.

“I’m very pleased,” Homestead Valley Sanitary District Chairman Einar Asbo said. “The people spoke and the people were right.”

The ballot measure was the latest attempt to resolve a long-standing debate over what to do with the tiny districts on the heels of Assembly Bill 1232, then-state Assemblyman Jared Huffman's bill that moved decision-making authority for consolidation away from districts' boards of directors and into the hands of the countywide Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO).

Reilly said that fact that it was defeated in most of the districts demonstrates that residents prefer local control, and after two years of debate, he’s glad to put the measure behind him.

“We will be able to get back to operating our districts and not focusing on LAFCO,” Reilly said.

Asbo said the measure has been a significant distraction to the board members. 

“This is the first time LAFCO has tried to initiate this consolidation, and it was the wrong thing to do,” he said. 

Not everyone, however, felt that way.

Scott McKown, co-chairman of the League of Women Voters of Marin County’s Local Governance Committee, wrote a letter to Patch urging residents to vote in favor of the consolidation. The current structure doesn’t allow for the consideration of increasingly complex issues, he said, and with no contested elections in the four districts in the past 10 years, reducing the number of board seats available would create more public participation.

“It does not make sense," McKown said, “to operate a system with 20 elected directors and four managers to serve a population of less than 15,000.”

Talk of consolidating the districts first emerged in the wake of a pair of sewage spills in 2008 that cost the Sewerage Agency of Southern Marin (SASM) $2.6 million in fines and fees. SASM consists of six member agencies, including Mill Valley, the Tamalpais Community Services District and the sanitary districts of Almonte, Alto, Homestead Valley and Richardson Bay.

Through a contract agreement, the city of Mill Valley operates the SASM waste treatment plant on Sycamore Avenue and oversees its staff and management. The city of Mill Valley has been the operator of the SASM plant on Sycamore Avenue since 1979. Although Richardson Bay district officials suggested the possibility of cutting ties with the city in 2010, the SASM board later approved a revised operations and maintenance agreement with the city to continue operating the plant.

Those spills also incited a 2012 lawsuit filed by the Richardson Bay district, which collects sewage for more than 4,000 households in Strawberry and parts of Tiburon, against the city of Mill Valley. The district wanted the city to reimburse and compensate SASM and its respective agencies for the losses, fines and forfeitures they suffered as a result of the city’s operation and management of the facility.

A Marin County Superior Court judge rejected that lawsuit in March.

Huffman's bill was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2010, but the LAFCO board, with southern Marin Supervisor Kate Spears serving as the swing vote, voted 4-3 against using its authority to force consolidation that was granted by Huffman's bill. 

A 2009 Marin County Civil Grand Jury report prepared in the wake of the spills concluded that the six sewer districts that comprise SASM could run more efficiently if they combined.

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