3 Cities Sued for Cleanup of Polluted Runoff : Environment: El Segundo, Hermosa Beach and Beverly Hills are accused of failing to enforce federal storm drain requirements.

An environmental group has filed suit against Beverly Hills, El Segundo and Hermosa Beach, charging that the cities have failed to establish adequate programs to clean up toxic water flowing from their storm drains into Santa Monica Bay.

The suit was filed late last month in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“As far as we know,” said Everett DeLano, the group’s attorney, “this is the first citizen suit in the country to bring about enforcement of the storm water requirements of the Clean Water Act.”

The group is asking the court to force the cities to clean up toxic runoff and to pay civil damages of $25,000 per day for each violation of the federal Clean Water Act. The money would go to the U.S. Treasury.

Beverly Hills officials did not return calls regarding the suit last week, but city Public Works Director Daniel Webster said in a previous interview that the group’s complaints missed the mark.

Beverly Hills takes fastidious care of its streets and alleys to keep trash and pollutants out of the county-owned storm drains, he said. The city has no big industrial polluters, and it requires companies that steam-clean the sides of walls and buildings to contain the runoff so it will not end up in the storm drains, he said.

Some of the complaints contend that the city has failed to file reports pertaining to clean water requirements, when actually the city did file the reports to the county, Webster said.

El Segundo officials likewise asserted that the city has already taken significant steps to clean up the runoff flowing from its storm drains.

The city said its steps have included an ordinance that it says is adequate to discourage discharge into storm drains; weekly street sweeping, and a cable television program designed to educate residents about the problem.

Mary Rooney, acting city manager in Hermosa Beach, declined to comment on the legal action.

The suit is one in a series of legal moves launched earlier this year by the environmental group to force industry, local government and public agencies to begin cleaning up storm drain runoff.

Runoff carries pesticides, toxic minerals and heavy metals from lawns, roadways and industrial plants through storm drains and into the bay. The contaminated water can kill or poison plant and marine life, including fish consumed by humans.

Under the Clean Water Act, citizen groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council may sue local governments and businesses if they believe cleanup efforts have not gone far enough or government agencies have failed to enforce provisions of the act.

The California Regional Water Quality Board, the local agency charged with monitoring compliance with the act, has sent letters to the cities notifying them of what it considers deficiencies in their cleanup plans.

But the resources council has complained that the agency has been lax in enforcing cleanup efforts.

Under provisions of the Clean Water Act, DeLano said, local governments and businesses have been required since 1990 to address the runoff problem with a series of “best management practices.”

These might include adopting local ordinances to punish people who dump such things as engine oil and industrial chemicals down storm drains. It can also include stenciling warning signs on the drains to ward off prospective polluters.

Other measures might be increased street sweeping, setting up telephone hot lines so that citizens can report violators, creating inspection programs for businesses such as dry cleaners and gasoline stations, setting up municipal disposal centers so residents can dispose of household toxins such as paint and cleaning fluids, and planting trees and grasses that will catch and hold runoff water.

Last month, the resources council sued Caltrans, calling it the single largest polluter of Santa Monica Bay.

The council has also notified four cities--Rancho Palos Verdes, Redondo Beach, Culver City and Westlake Village--that they face legal action if they do not take steps to clean up their runoff.

The resources council has also threatened to file suit against a dozen industrial firms in the region if they do not take steps to clean up runoff from their plants.

Within local government and private industry, DeLano said, there has been “a culture of noncompliance” when it comes to addressing the issue of urban runoff.

The cleanup, DeLano said, is vitally important to the life of the Earth’s oceans. He cited a recent study by the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project that showed that more than 65,000 pounds of lead per year goes into the bay from storm drains. Eating fish contaminated with lead can cause mental retardation in children and sickness in adults.

No one has produced an exact count of how many storm drains empty daily into the bay, but estimates are as high as 200, DeLano said.

In dry weather about 25 million gallons of untreated runoff flows into the bay every day, he said. Rainy weather can swell the runoff to 10 billion gallons a day.