Montecito voters this week shook up their Sanitary District, restoring a board majority that favors shipping the community’s sewage to Santa Barbara, full speed ahead, instead of treating it locally.
Unofficial election results show that Woody Barrett, an eight-year board incumbent, easily won another two-year term on the board with 62 percent of the vote, running against incumbent John Murphy, a relative newcomer who garnered 38 percent.
Vying for a four-year term, Rock Rockenbach, the board president, kept his seat with 40 percent of the vote; and Floyd Wicks, a Montecito water board member, was elected to the Sanitary District board with 39 percent of the vote.
Chris Francis, who ran on a slate with Barrett and Wicks, lost his bid for a board seat with 21 percent of the vote.
Wicks will join the Sanitary District board on Dec. 9.
The Sanitary District election comes at a time when the board is facing its most consequential decision since the wastewater treatment plant was built in the 1960s at Channel Drive and Monte Cristo Lane: whether to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure or invest in the “city option” and pay Santa Barbara to treat Montecito’s sewage.
On election day, the voters put their weight behind the city option in casting their ballots for Barrett and Wicks. Together with board member Dorinne Johnson, Barrett and Wicks will form a board majority that does not favor spending any more time or money looking into rebuilding Montecito’s wastewater treatment plant.
Rockenbach, in turn, has said he wants to carefully consider rebuilding the plant before making any decision. A $1.7 million study by an engineering consulting firm on that alternative, commissioned by the board last fall, is expected to be released in the spring. A portion of the funds were earmarked for a technical memo on the feasibility of shipping Montecito’s wastewater to Santa Barbara.
At its regular meeting on Wednesday, a day after the election, the board for the first time released a rough cost estimate for the city option. According to a “preliminary summary” by the board’s consulting engineering firm, it could cost between $106 million and $126 million, not counting an additional $14 million for demolishing Montecito’s treatment plant.
It would take an estimated six years to launch the city option, including constructing two pipelines to Santa Barbara’s El Estero wastewater treatment plant, a large wastewater holding tank, a lift station and a pump station, the consulting firm found.
No cost estimates or timeline for rebuilding the treatment plant are available yet.
Montecito’s ‘outfall‘
Barrett and Wicks’s campaign was funded primarily with $20,000 in loans — $10,000 each from Barrett and Bob Hazard, a Birnam Wood Golf Club resident, campaign filings show. The campaign used the money to send a glossy mailer to every household in Montecito last month and pay for a four-page insert in the Montecito Journal, pledging to shut down the treatment plant on Channel Drive and start sending the community’s wastewater to Santa Barbara.
The campaign also received $9,500 in cash donations, including $5,000 from the Committee for Montecito Water Security, a group of wealthy residents led by Hazard. The committee spent an unprecedented $250,000 backing Barrett, Wicks, Johnson and other candidates to win control of the water and Sanitary boards in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections.
The main benefit of connecting the Sanitary District with Santa Barbara, Barrett and Wicks told voters this fall, would be to eliminate the pipeline, or “outfall,” that dumps Montecito’s treated wastewater 1,500 feet offshore of Butterfly Beach.
Under the Santa Barbara option, the city would be recycling a portion of Montecito’s wastewater and shipping the rest offshore through its own outfall.
At Wednesday’s meeting, speaking as a member of the public, Wicks said the cost estimates released by the board on the city option were misleading, adding, “It almost purports to be a higher cost than replacing the entire plant.”
Barrett said: “I don’t know how these numbers were generated … It makes my pants light on fire.”
But beyond the money, Wicks said in an interview, it is state policy to eliminate short, shallow outfalls like Montecito’s that carry treated wastewater into the ocean.
“It’s not a cost factor to me,” he said. “It’s more doing the right thing for the community.”
In a statement to the press this week, Rockenbach said that campaign promises “must now be measured against engineering realities, actual costs and operational constraints.”
“I look forward to working constructively with the new board to reach the best possible decision for Montecito,” Rockenbach said. “That means putting campaign rhetoric aside and evaluating all alternatives fairly.”
‘Water Security’ program
Wicks and Barrett were first elected to the Montecito water and Sanitary District boards in 2016 and 2018, respectively, on slates backed by the Water Security Committee. Hazard, then a Montecito Journal columnist, and other members of the Birnam Wood and Valley Club golf courses, were key committee organizers and donors.
The Water Security candidates for the Sanitary District, including Barrett and Johnson, won past elections by pledging to shut down Montecito’s outfall. But as board members, they did not support local wastewater recycling, an initiative that would have reduced the amount of treated sewage going offshore through the outfall.
Through the years, Water Security members also have pursued consolidation of Montecito’s water and Sanitary districts. That plan failed last spring when Dana Newquist resigned from the Sanitary District board and there were no longer three votes on that board for a merger. Rockenbach voted against consolidation, which he viewed as a takeover bid by the water district.
The Sanitary District has seen a lot of turnover in recent years. A longtime general manager quit in the run-up to the 2020 election, when Water Security candidates first gained a majority on the board. Since then, three other general managers have come and gone, along with two legal counsels, two district administrators, four board members and a number of district workers.
