COBB, Calif. – With another big storm in the forecast spurring concerns about additional runoff from the fire-damaged Hoberg's Resort property, county officials are preparing to bring in a contractor as soon as Friday to complete an emergency septic system cleanup ordered this week.

Supervisor Rob Brown said that the county gave Hoberg's management initial notice on Monday of the need to perform an immediate summary abatement, serving the resort with the notice formally at 5 p.m. Tuesday.

The notice required that part of the resort's septic system that had been damaged and exposed by last September's Valley fire be abated within 48 hours, Brown said.

Dave Svec, the business development consultant for Lake County Partners LLC, which owns the resort, told Lake County News on Thursday evening that, in that time, they had been able to pump out all the tanks and make sure all the areas are marked off.

“Next will be the demolition of the tanks, structures, etc. which will be removed from the resort property to appropriate location,” he said in an email message.

However, Lake County Environmental Health Director Ray Ruminski – who visited the site Thursday evening, after the deadline passed – told Lake County News that not enough of the required tasks had been completed.

“They've used up their 48 hours and didn't accomplish everything we directed them to,” he said.

As a result, Ruminski said the county was working on getting a contractor on site to complete the work before a Sunday storm arrives.

Ruminski said county officials had responded last Friday afternoon after being contacted that morning by Ben Murphy, an employee of Cobb Area Water District, about runoff coming from the resort's septic system and going into a nearby waterway.

Ruminski said he and Brown visited the resort site that day and found that the septic system was being surcharged by stormwater from the series of large storms that had occurred last week.

The Valley fire destroyed all of the pumping equipment and the buildings, so the stormwater now falls on the building footprint and overloads the drains, he said.

He said the aging septic system tank – which hadn’t been in use for some time – was overflowing and draining down into a pump station, which in turn was going into a roadway ditch near the water company. From there it was traveling into a drainage and then to a culvert, across the golf course.

At the bottom of the golf course, that runoff flowed into the headwaters of Big Canyon Creek, which leads eventually to Putah Creek, Ruminski said.

He said the pathogens in the runoff will get some dilution as it flows, so it will not be as concentrated.

However, it was enough of a hazard that the county determined a health emergency existed, which allowed them to pursue a 48-hour – rather than a 30-day – summary abatement process, Ruminski said.

“They can't keep that up. They can't continue that,” he said of the situation at the resort property.

Ruminski said the county health department did not take a sample of the water running off of the property into the creek, although he said Cobb Area Water District officials said they were taking a sample. He said he hadn't yet seen a lab report.

He said the county doesn't know where all of the resort's septic system underground collector lines are for the buildings, but they had been able to identify the lift station, aeration works and percolation lagoons.

Brown said the work on the 48-hour abatement notice was under way over the weekend, with County Counsel Anita Grant crafting the document.

Also last weekend, Murphy contacted Lake County News regarding the situation. He said on Saturday afternoon, the day after the county officials were on the scene, that he didn’t believe county officials were moving quickly enough to stop the impact on the watershed.

Ruminski said the summary abatement's directives included removal of all burned debris, the lift station's pumping equipment and apparatus, and what was left of a burned masonry block building; digging out tanks and a concrete vault; backfilling and compacting the excavation with clean soil; disinfecting the area; grading it off; and putting in erosion control.

He said he spoke with Svec and told him he would be by at the end of the day on Thursday to check on the progress.

When he went to the resort on Thursday evening – after having been out of town at a meeting for the day – Ruminski said the site was locked up and no one was there, but he was able to view the work site.

He confirmed that a pumper truck was on site, that timber and debris had been sorted by hand crews and a plastic safety fence had been erected.

However, the major excavation of the site, including removing the vault and concrete, was going to require heavy equipment, Ruminski said.

“It's still vulnerable to having the same discharge if there's another strong rainstorm come through,” he said.

Ruminski said that, based on the resort management's track record, the county doesn't have confidence that they can get to the next required steps.

As a result, Lake County Public Works is working to get a contractor on site on Friday to begin doing the excavation work right way. “That's what we're trying to set up.”

He said he couldn't estimate what the work to meet the summary abatement's requirements might cost, but with the proper equipment he said it should take, at most, two days.

With a rainstorm predicted for Sunday, “We really want to get it done before that,” said Ruminski.

He added, “That would make a lot of Cobb people think we were successful,” referring to the mounting concerns about the resort property and its condition that have been raised over the past several months by area residents.

Not only has the resort's fire damage not been abated, but it also had become a site for stockpiling logs for a proposed milling operation.

After the site became overwhelmed by lumber and community members complained, the county put a stop to the plan and ordered that the site be cleaned up.

Both Brown and Ruminski said the cleanup the county informally directed the resort's management to carry out regarding the logs is still under way, although they said progress has been made.

Brown said that, in some cases, the logs have been helping with preventing erosion during the heavy winter rains.

Svec said he appreciates Brown and Ruminski, who have tried hard to help the resort during “a tough situation.”

He said Lake County Partners – which bought the resort in April 2014 – continues to work with the county as best as they can.

It was under the previous owners, Cobb Mountain Partners, that environmental violations were identified on the resort property several years ago.

Those violations led to the prosecution of Dan Nelson, the resort's manager, who was convicted in April of a misdemeanor for willfully violating a Cal/OSHA standard for potentially exposing his employees to asbestos during a 2012 renovation project, as Lake County News has reported.

Earlier this month, Nelson – who has remained in a management position under the new ownership – was booked into the Lake County Jail to serve his sentence in the case, which based on the 2015 settlement included 60 days in the county jail, 340 hours of community service, a $5,000 fine and a nondeductible sum of $20,000 to the Lakeside Health Clinic of Lake County.

Resort's overall fire cleanup still pending

Ruminski said that the current summary abatement is “a tiny part of the whole resort property cleanup” that still remains to be done.

Late last year, the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, or CalRecycle – which led the cleanup of fire-damaged properties – had carried out some commercial cleanups, including the Havy's restaurant site near Hidden Valley Lake and a tire shop near a school, as well as Harbin Hot Springs, which ran into the millions, Ruminski said.

In between Christmas and New Year's, the California Office of Emergency Services determined that commercial properties such as Hoberg's – and several others that were still waiting to be cleaned up – didn't qualify for the program, a decision that was relayed to county officials at the start of the year, Ruminski said.

Ruminski said the Federal Emergency Management Agency spends more money on debris removal in disasters than on anything else, and it said commercial properties didn't meet its eligible criteria for reimbursement to the state, which meant commercial property cleanups would need to be covered by state funds.

FEMA reported in January that CalRecycle was receiving just over $43.3 million in federal grant funding to go toward the $57.7 million in private property debris removal for the Valley fire, with the remainder to be covered by the state.

CalRecycle spokesman Lance Klug confirmed to Lake County News that it was Cal OES' determination that commercial properties are not eligible for cleanup assistance under the debris removal program. Commercial properties are only eligible if they are considered a threat to the public.

Ruminski said CalRecycle did some documentation and preliminary surveys of the Hoberg's site before the directive came down to cease cleaning up commercial sites. “We haven't been able to get copies of that report.”

As for the general cleanup of the resort, which Ruminski acknowledged has been complicated by the log storage, he said the county is still looking at what can be done to get the fire debris removed.

He said the resort hasn't yet been given an abatement notice for the fire cleanup. Instead, he said the county is concentrating on the 16 or 17 residential lots whose owners have not taken action to clean them up. Those properties are now moving into the abatement process.

Brown, who chairs the Board of Supervisors this year, has scheduled an update on the Hoberg's situation on the board's Tuesday agenda. The update is scheduled for 11 a.m.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.