The San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board today fined Orange County's Santa Margarita Water District $133,190 for two spills that flushed 857,934 gallons of shit into San Juan Creek and Cristianitos Creek.
The water district – Orange County's second largest, serving more than 150,000 residents and businesses in Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita, Coto de Caza, Las Flores, Ladera Ranch, and Talega – falls within the northern part of the San Diego region's boundaries, which also take in parts of Riverside.
And yes, given those South County zip codes, that was some expensive shit spilled into the waterways. Dates of the spills were not given. They violated public health requirements enforced by the San Diego Regional Water Board and the State Water Resources Control Board. Fines against the city of San Marcos and private firm SFPP, L.P. for separate infractions, when lumped in with the Santa Margarita Water Board's penalties, generated $473,140 in civil liability penalties announced by the San Diego region today.
So, see Arnie, the state is still generating some revenue.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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