Water Board OKs Cleanup of Tainted Santa Ana River

A costly cleanup of the long-besieged Santa Ana River was unanimously approved Friday by a regional water board, capping years of debate over resolving one of Southern California’s most severe water pollution problems.

Under the new plan, sewage plants in the Inland Empire must reduce nitrate levels in the millions of gallons of waste that flow into the river every day. Nitrates, a dangerous substance in sewage, already have rendered large water supplies in Riverside County unsafe and pose a serious threat to Orange County’s drinking water.

Costing an estimated $200 million, the Santa Ana River project is the region’s most ambitious, controversial and expensive water cleanup. To comply, cities and water districts in the Inland Empire must build major sewage-treatment systems and renovate old ones.

While the plan must be formally accepted by the State Water Resources Control Board, cities expect to begin designing their plants soon. Building the treatment systems will take three to five years. Approval by the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board came despite concern from some Inland Empire representatives and board members that the cleanup costs could threaten that area’s economy, with low-income residents hurt the most.

Funds for the improvements will come from an estimated $3 to $4 increase in monthly sewer bills for each household in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Because the waste originates in the Inland Empire, residents of the two counties must pay the cost, while Orange County reaps most of the benefits.

“Even though it’s sometimes painful, we have to force solutions,” said Jerry A. King, a longtime member of the water board.

“We’ve had such mushrooming growth in the Inland Empire that the river has been unable to keep pace,” said King, owner of a Newport Beach land-use planning firm. “The problem is very serious, and getting bigger, and none of the solutions are easy.”

The river, Southern California’s longest, flows 100 miles from the San Bernardino Mountains to the ocean off Huntington Beach and is composed almost entirely of treated sewage. Often maligned for its chocolate-colored flow, the Santa Ana is nonetheless a vital source of drinking water because it feeds underground basins between Anaheim and San Bernardino.

Every day, more than 130 million gallons of waste water containing nitrogen, which forms nitrates, is released into the river from 18 city and regional waste water plants between San Bernardino and Chino. Within a decade, the waste will almost double because of the area’s fast-growing population, officials predict.

The board’s staff decided on the limits after an intense three-year, $1-million study.