City Defers Lagoon Decision for 2 More Weeks

City Council delayed making a decision about the future use of Seaside Lagoon Tuesday night, voting to revisit the matter at its next gathering in two weeks.

By that time, city officials should have a better read on the regional water quality board’s reaction to the council’s for a two-year study on the amount of metals in the water that the salt-water attraction discharges back into the ocean. City officials had been scheduled to meet with the L.A. Regional Water Quality Control Board on Jan. 12, but the regulators postponed the meeting until Jan. 20.

The city has until Feb. 7 to submit a plan for this test to the board.

City officials are balking at the notion of paying an additional $50,000 on top of  already spent on water tests and monitoring during the past five years. During the City Council session, City Manager Bill Workman projected that the actual cost to the city could well reach $1 million when the amount of time staffers have spent on the issue is added into the equation.

Acting Recreation and Community Services Director Maggie Healy presented a cost-assessment for three potential swim-free Seaside Lagoon options this summer. But the council, having early on signaled its desire to delay the decision, didn’t spend too much time dissecting each alternative.

Several residents, and the owners of Redondo Marina, weighed in anyway. They suggested that the city explore even more ways to modernize the facility, possibly through partnership with private companies. 

These suggestions had come up before, Councilmen noted. "Nothing new is being said here tonight because we've been talking about this over and over again," Councilmen Steve Diels said at one point. 

The immediate challenge for the city is to find a way to keep the popular salt-water attraction open without incurring further fines or laying out loads of money that the city doesn't have on improvements. 

Each of the three alternatives up for consideration carries its own pricetag. Filling the pool area with sand would cost more than $3o0,000, for example, while doing that and adding a water play feature would cost around $750,000. Keeping the facility shut during the summer season while officials pursue other legislative remedies would cost $146,539. 

The city currently subsidizes 43 percent of the facility’s $650,113 annual operating budget. Removing the swim feature would likely reduce admissions, which bring in around $320,000 annually. 

The two alternative recreational uses are intended as temporary solutions that could be rolled back if the city wins its battle with the regional water board. In that case the attraction could add the swim feature back to Seaside Lagoon.

Several councilmen, apparently feeling the heat from their constituents, went to great pains to stress their desire to keep the facility open. Just not necessarily with the swimming facility.

“We’re committed to keeping Seaside Lagoon open in some fashion or another,” Councilman Matt Kilroy said. “We wouldn’t be renovating the bathrooms if we weren’t committed to it.”

Councilman Bill Brand urged further improvements that could maximize the facility's use. Open to the public during summer months and private parties year round, Seaside Lagoon draws between 80,000 to 100,000 patrons annually, around 15 percent of them from Redondo. 

“I want to see this morph into something that’s open 52 weeks a year,” Brand said, before predicting that the council would OK the test the next meeting as it considers those alternatives.

Fellow legislators sounded adamantly opposed to that notion Tuesday night. Steve Aspel, acting as mayor with Mike Gin away on business in Washington, D.C., said he most definitely would not approve such an expenditure, which he called blackmail.

“I refuse to get shaken down by any self-appointed guru of clean water,” he said.

Councilman Pat Aust also had strong words about the water board, likening it to a crack addict.

“We’re spent more than a million to make them happy—and they’re still not happy,” he said. “They’re like a crack addict. They just want more.”

 Diels, fighting a cold, reiterated his view that the city should explore legislative remedies beyond the water board.

“We’ve got to get out from under their thumb,” he said. “At some point it might be that we need to close the lagoon in order to preserve it.”