Water Watchdog Assailed for Poor Files, Poor Results

A new state evaluation of the agency charged with protecting water quality in the San Diego area has turned up inadequate files, out-of-date orders and signs of widespread failure on the part of industries and public agencies to comply with the rules of water quality.

The state team traced many of the problems to the shortage of manpower and money that afflicts the agency and others like it. But it also criticized the cooperative approach the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board has taken with the firms and agencies it regulates.

“In several ways, our review indicated that the approach has not been successful, as dischargers failed to ‘cooperate’ and instances of noncompliance continued to be unresolved,” said the report by the State Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento.

The performance evaluation was the first in a series of audits that the state board is doing on the nine regional boards. The San Diego region encompasses most of San Diego County and small sections of Orange and Riverside counties.

Each board is responsible for regulating dischargers that dump into the state’s waters, including sewage authorities, agriculture and private industry. In recent months, numerous publicized pollution cases have brought the San Diego board into the spotlight.

During its study in late May, the state team scrutinized board records on 26 dischargers--roughly 7% of the agency’s workload. The evaluators praised the staff’s “dedication and initiative,” especially in light of “extremely limited” resources.

Among the findings:

- Eleven of the 26 “waste discharge orders” examined were out of date by state standards. Twenty-two of the 26 had not been reviewed within the 18 months recommended in the state’s procedures manual.

- Twelve of the 26 dischargers were found to have at least one instance of noncompliance since 1982. There was no evidence of resolution of those violations in 9 of the 12 cases. (Agency members note that many violations are more technical than substantial.)

- Twenty-two percent of the permanent positions on the board’s staff, or 5.5 positions, were vacant as of May 1. “The high vacancy rate has a direct impact on the ability of the region to meet its workload commitments,” the report said.

- The region “has significant problems with its filing system,” the evaluators reported, noting that filing problems are common in other regions as well. “Information is often misfiled or not filed at all.”

- The staff appeared to investigate complaints “in a timely fashion,” but there was no procedure for management to “track the important milestones in complaint resolution and be assured that the issue was resolved.”

- Although the region promptly reviewed all compliance reports received from waste dischargers, 55% of the reports required were not sent in at all. There was no established procedure to ensure correction of violations identified in the reports, and there was no tracking system to monitor progress toward compliance.

The team especially criticized the board’s enforcement of rules governing dairies.

“Compliance inspections at dairies are performed infrequently even though there is evidence of noncompliance with waste discharge requirements,” it said. “The response of the regional board to the violations . . . seldom goes beyond either discussing the violation informally with the dairy operator or sending the operator a notice of violation.”

Responding to the state board in late July, regional board executive officer Ladin Delaney attributed many of the findings to the team’s “unfamiliarity with our files and procedures.” He said the 2 1/2 days the team spent was insufficient to become acquainted with the 26 cases.

Delaney said the evaluators mentioned some problems that had occurred as long as 20 years ago and have probably been corrected. He said that, in 1985, the board undertook an “intensive compliance inspection effort” for the dairies.

As for the vacancy rate, Delaney explained in an interview that the agency has been hurt by the increasingly uncompetitive salaries offered by the state. He said there has been a shortage of highly qualified engineers applying.

Delaney also said the board has been burdened by sewage authorities’ requests to lower the treatment standards for ocean discharges. Although federal law requires that the board hear and rule on all requests, no funding or additional staffing was provided.

“We were committed to do that work through the state board and Environmental Protection Agency, but we had no resources to do it,” he said. “So I had to rob from compliance inspections and monitoring report reviews, a bit here and a bit there. . . . What we had to do was internally redirect a lot of our resources--and let some of the other stuff go.”