Long Beach Joins Fight Against Proposed Crackdown on Bay Pollution

Wary of plans to plug the flow of pollution into Southern California’s coastal waters, Long Beach has joined a group of cities fighting a proposal to clamp down on businesses and homeowners who taint Los Angeles County’s storm drains.

The City Council approved a resolution this week asking the California Regional Water Quality Control Board to reconsider guidelines that would force the county’s cities to keep a closer watch on water runoff.

The board has scheduled a hearing on the proposed regulations for July 15, after which it could vote to send the plan to federal authorities for final approval.

Long Beach officials contend that site inspections suggested by the board would present new, costly burdens to the city and its constituents. They also dispute the relevance of the board’s supporting research, which examined the causes of contamination in Santa Monica Bay more closely than it did pollution in Long Beach Harbor.

Echoing the concerns of officials at other cities facing the same regulations, Mayor Beverly O’Neill said the board must be more specific about what Long Beach would be required to do and why, and then provide the necessary funding.

“We want to cooperate,” O’Neill said, “but we also want to know what responsibility we are assuming and how much this is going to cost the city.”

The Water Quality Control Board’s senior engineer for the project said each city would be permitted great flexibility to meet the regulations as long as certain standards are maintained.

“[Long Beach and other cities] will be developing their own [anti-pollution] programs that are specific to their cities,” staff engineer Winnie Jesena said. She insisted, however, that the city needs to do more to clean up the water it releases into its harbor.

Long Beach officials estimate that the new inspections--including follow-up and prosecution of violators--would cost $2.5 million a year more than what the city now spends to keep its coast clean, estimated at $12.4 million annually. According to a city staff report, the biggest cause of pollution in Long Beach Harbor is not storm drain runoff but the occasional ruptured sewer pipe.