Water Board

Anyone interested in water issues and a resident of Supervisor Judy Mikels' district may apply for an appointment to a local water board. The five-member board of the Waterworks District No. 19 Advisory Committee has one vacancy. The panel makes recommendations to the Board of Supervisors on water-supply and water-quality issues in the district. The board meets the fourth Thursday of each month at 3:30 p.m. in Moorpark. The district serves Somis and most of the Las Posas Valley.

The military's plan to drain contaminated ground water from pits saturated with jet fuel at the Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station was unanimously approved Friday by the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board. The drainage plan for the 81,000-square-foot area calls for installing perforated pipes along the bottom of three 20-foot-deep and 600-foot-long trenches to divert the polluted water to a nearby dump.

An Antelope Valley water board member who was arrested following a fire that heavily damaged his Lancaster home has pleaded not guilty to arson, authorities said Tuesday. Glenn D. Martin, 66, a member of the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency board of directors, was arrested Monday on suspicion of arson of a residential dwelling, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reported.

Seeking to bolster a high-profile conservation agenda, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has named prominent business and government veteran David W. Fleming to the board of Metropolitan Water District, the agency that supplies much of Southern California's water. Fleming, a lawyer who has led city and state commissions as well as the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, will become a Metropolitan Water District director as the agency is warning that it may curtail deliveries because of water shortages in state reservoirs.

The Casitas Municipal Water District board discussed a plan Wednesday to use $2 million in reserve funds to pay for a new water filtering system. The district's $9.6-million proposed budget for 1991-92 was presented at a study session Wednesday afternoon. The district's board of directors is expected to adopt the final version June 12. The reserves would be recovered by the selling of bonds late in 1992, district administrator Ron Morse said.

Under pressure from a coalition of cities in Los Angeles County, the board of the Water Replenishment District agreed Friday to changes designed to make the agency more responsive to the cities it serves, according to a Lakewood city official. The most significant change was a decision to expand the board from five to eight members, with the three new seats to be reserved for water industry professionals or elected officials.

A state water board on Friday fined an Anaheim auto salvage operator $6,100 for failure to comply with orders to test for soil and ground-water contamination beneath a 40,000-ton pile of hazardous salvage residue. On a 6-1 vote, the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board reduced a recommended penalty of $61,000 against Orange County Steel Salvage Inc. Board member Timothy Johnson proposed the lower fine of $6,100, questioning operator George Adams Jr.'s ability to pay a larger amount.

A Malibu landowner and the state Regional Water Quality Control Board have agreed to settle a 2-year-old dispute over trash buried on a 325-acre property in Encinal Canyon. Lester Richman, who has owned the property for more than 30 years, had been fined $120,000 and ordered to clean up an unapproved landfill that contained household trash, records show. Richman, in turn, sued the state board in Santa Barbara Superior Court.

Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. must begin treating contaminated ground water beneath its Burbank facility by Sept. 15, three months later than previously scheduled, a state environmental agency announced Thursday. In addition, Lockheed must remove pollution from its soil by Aug. 1, complete an expanded investigation of toxic contamination by Sept. 1 and excavate an abandoned waste-disposal site by Dec.