Las Virgenes Municipal Water District

The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District plans to spend as much as $250,000 to purchase office furniture for its new headquarters now under construction, officials said. The agency will accept bids for the furniture until Aug. 30, but the staff has recommended purchasing the furniture from Herman Miller Inc. of West Hollywood and Westwood-based Hayworth Inc.

An employee's lawsuit claiming the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District failed to protect him from sexual harassment has been dismissed by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. But the attorney for David Sarti said his client will appeal the ruling handed down late last month by Judge Dzintra Janavs. In the suit filed last year, Sarti said that his supervisors were aware that he endured same-sex harassment by a co-worker for a number of years, but did nothing to prevent it.

The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District will try to survive the drought by refusing to accept new customers, casting doubt on the fate of many proposed developments in the southwestern San Fernando Valley. Faced with a mandatory 17% cutback ordered by the Metropolitan Water District, which provides the local utility's supply, Las Virgenes directors voted this week to provide water only to existing customers and to new ones who received commitments before Monday.

The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District has purchased a controversial, 491-acre parcel of land near the Westlake Village Reservoir to protect its water supply. The district paid the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. $6.3 million for the site where 300 luxury homes on Westlake Vista had been planned.

Thanks to Jessica Azani, a Calabasas sixth-grader, Bay Laurel Elementary School has been deemed keeper of the bowl. The bowl, a Waterford crystal trophy, is given annually by the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District to the school whose student wins its annual water awareness poster contest. With a message taken to heart in this arid climate, Jessica won this year with a poster proclaiming, "No Water, No Life!"

Environmentalists trying to keep a developer from building houses on land in Westlake Village where a rare, and possibly endangered, wildflower grows said Friday that court records offer a glimmer of hope that the land could wind up in the hands of Las Virgenes Municipal Water District instead. The catch: The developer would have to either agree--and there's no sign of that--or be forced into agreement by a lawsuit over the troublesome flower.

After much preparation, the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District is now offering free compost to its customers, as well as to clients of the Triunfo Sanitation District. Last Saturday, on the first day the compost was offered, 48 customers showed up at Rancho Las Virgenes Composting Facility, the district's new sludge-recycling facility, said Bobbe Wymer, the district's spokeswoman. A total of 20 cubic yards of the product was given away.

Vernon Padgett, a retired doctor and frequent critic of the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, has unseated board President Harold "Hal" Helsley, the white-bearded director who has served for 20 years. Backed by a group pushing for lower water rates, Padgett and two other challengers seeking seats on the board forced three veteran directors--with 48 years of water board service among them--into tight races.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has cut by nearly two-thirds the amount that a state parkland agency and a local water district must pay to a home-building company for depriving it of a chance to buy a large tract of land near Westlake Village. Judge Madeleine I. Flier ordered a jury's $11.2-million award to Village Properties reduced to $4.2 million.