After 13 years of public discussion, SCV Sanitation District officials are once again “starting over” in their search for a new deep well site following a protest Wednesday from a Westside crowd wanting the county agency to look for a whole new plan.

“The board clearly directed us to go identify a different site,” said Ray Tremblay, Sanitation District spokesman, “so we absolutely are not using the Stevenson Ranch or Westridge sites at all. They’ve directed us to go find a new place to go and implement the project.”

“We have to start over and find a different site, so it puts us back to square one on that part of the project,” Tremblay said. “We’re still making great progress on implementing the treatment part of the plan.”

Sanitation District staff now has “to start over and re-evaluate (the plans) with a clean slate,” Tremblay said, adding staff also is seeking to determine if another well site is even feasible.

District staff would know more after a new “initial study” is undertaken, which is a California Environmental Quality Act requirement, he said.

County Supervisor Michael Antonovich questioned a state water official on what he called the “arbitrary” nature of the chloride limit, and whether the county had the recourse to fight.

To that end, he even asked if the legal counsel who spoke on behalf of the corporate objectors of the well plan, such as Princess Cruise and Boston Scientific, if they’d helped litigate to the fight against the chloride limit set by the state.

“The is a case of regulatory agencies going above and beyond the regulations that those legislative bodies have set,” Antonovich said. “We’re trying to come to a reasonable solution while dealing with an unreasonable regulatory agency.”

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, a state agency established by the EPA’s Clean Water Act that sets the standard for the amount of chloride — or salt, and other chemicals — that can be in water we send downstream, is overreaching with the 100 milligrams/liter chloride limit, Antonovich said.

He argued the limit and subsequent costs to abide by the limit being put on Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District was onerous and amounted to taxation without representation. He also asked if the state board would hold a meeting in the Santa Clarita Valley.

“You have the right to face your accuser,” Antonovich said. “This is due process.”

Sam Unger, executive director for the state’s RWQCB, stated the board’s position — that scientifically tested data supported the 100 mg/l limit in order to repair salt damage to water in the Piru Basin in Ventura County, which is where Santa Clara River effluence goes after leaving local treatment plants.

While the Sanitation District has the ability to start over on the chloride treatment project, Unger said, the RWQCB would expect the county agency to abide by the schedule it agreed to in its last fine settlement.

The state board already granted the district a four-year extension for abiding by the chloride limit, he said, after district ratepayers rejected the Alternative Water Resources Management plan in 2010. Cost was the determining factor in the plan’s demise.

In 2012, SCV Sanitation District ratepayers were fined more than $200,000 for not hitting a previous schedule for the approval of a project to remove chloride.

In 2013, SCVSD staff released studies suggesting deep well injection — the pumping of excess chloride into a series of wells about two miles into the earth — would be the cheapest option.

However, an 11th hour change earlier this year due to a planning mistake by Sanitation District staff left the agency to use a site near the 16th hole of Valencia TPC. The land originally slated for the well project was denied due to a conservation easement by county officials put in before the well plan’s approval.