A Sea Change in Behavior Sought

A tiny skirmish in the war to clean up Santa Monica Bay was joined about a year ago when a boat mechanic in Marina del Rey slipped on some slimy runoff and found that it was from a restaurant spraying down soiled kitchen floor mats outside its back door.

The aggravated mechanic protested to a local environmental activist, who, in turn, cajoled El Torito Mexican restaurant into hosing its food waste not into a storm drain, but into a new drain that would lead to a sewage treatment plant. Thus, the waters of the Marina and Santa Monica Bay beyond were spared a nightly dose of detergent, lettuce, chicken scraps and generally scummy water.

Such modest environmental revolutions are supposed to become de rigueur in Los Angeles County after state water officials’ Monday passage of a comprehensive set of storm drain regulations--a veritable etiquette book of good urban hygiene. But it will take scores of different actions in scores of different places before the incremental changes add up to a cleaner ocean, government regulators and environmentalists say.

“If this bay dies, it is going to be the death of a thousand cuts, not one gaping wound,” said Terry Tamminen, leader of Santa Monica BayKeeper, the group that ferreted out the Marina del Rey contamination. “It’s not one restaurant in one night or any one location causing the problem. It’s thousands of them. Now, it’s going to take a thousand individual initiatives and changes of personal habit to turn this thing around.”

Activists are hoping that Monday’s adoption of the so-called National Pollution Discharge Elimination System, combined with the public education that will follow, will vest a new generation of Angelenos with a behavioral change akin to the recycling revolution.

*

Just as bottles and aluminum cans now are tossed into special containers rather than straight to the garbage, residents and business people increasingly will be prodded to modify their everyday behavior to reduce the pollution in storm drains and, thus, the ocean.

The changes could mean anything from residents cleaning up better after their dogs and using less-toxic pesticides to restaurants keeping food waste out of back alleys and cities thoroughly cleaning catch basins before rain pushes the sediment and debris to the sea.

The main obstacle to cutting pollution remains public ignorance, activists said.

“I see people all the time in my neighborhood who are washing trash and everything else down the storm drains,” said Gail Ruderman Feuer, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “What people have said to me is: ‘Doesn’t this get treated before it goes into the ocean?’ They are very surprised when I tell them it goes directly to the ocean.”

Only water from sinks, baths and toilets runs into the sewer system and thus to treatment plants, before it empties into the ocean. Storm drains flow through every neighborhood in Los Angeles and empty into the ocean at dozens of locations.

The plan approved by state water officials is considered an adjunct to the federal Clean Water Act. Technically, violations of the rules can results in fines of $25,000 a day. But practically speaking, regulators are spread too thin to enforce the law and environmentalists can press only so many enforcement actions through the courts.

That leaves public education.

Individuals can improve the quality of the bay in tiny increments by, for example, preventing their cars from leaking oil, gas or coolant onto the street. They can keep their tires properly inflated so extra rubber doesn’t wear onto the road. They can stop throwing trash into the storm drain catch basins that are cut into many curbsides.

Businesses are expected to keep runoff on their property, or to filter the water before releasing it into the street.

Government agencies are required to clean those curb catch basins at least once a year to remove the potentially high levels of lead, copper and other hazardous materials that can accumulate there.

Under an agreement being negotiated between the California Department of Transportation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, about 2,000 catch basins will be cleaned even more often--three times a year--because they contain such high levels of contamination. Before the environmental group intervened with a lawsuit, the state highway agency hardly ever cleaned the receptacles.

Most cities in the area said they already conform to the prescribed once-yearly regimen for cleaning the basins. And they have generally marked the basins with the now familiar fish logo, to remind the public about the ultimate destination of the drains. In Pomona, Boy Scouts were recruited to paint the anti-pollution message on as many curbs as they could.

But cities are expected to go a step further in limiting the runoff dumped into the drains, particularly from new developments.

Santa Monica has taken the lead on such rules, already ordering that new buildings produce 20% less runoff during rains than typical structures of their kind.

The reductions can be accomplished by, for example, increasing landscaping or by directing storm gutters toward yards and other permeable surfaces, instead of toward driveways and walkways that empty directly onto the street.

In one creative project on the Third Street Promenade, storm water from the roof of a commercial building will be directed into a storage cistern, where potentially contaminated sediments can settle before cleaner water is pumped into storm drains or planters.

Santa Monica is also leading the effort to design more pollution-proof storm drains. Curb openings to many drains in the city are covered during the dry season, to prevent the public from using them as trash receptacles. And Santa Monica is heading a consortium of cities spending $250,000 to design basins that catch more sediment before it reaches the ocean.

Still, environmentalists such as Tamminen pledged continued vigilance to root out the sources of pollution.

The head of the Marina del Rey-based BayKeeper organization said he repeatedly had to push El Torito employees to stop them from washing the food-smeared floors mats with water that drained into the ocean. He said he finally got the attention of executives in the restaurant chain only when he videotaped employees doing the illicit cleanups.

*

That was about a year ago and, shortly thereafter, El Torito built a wash and draining building behind its main kitchen, at a cost of more than $30,000, to clean the mats. Restaurant officials essentially confirmed Tamminen’s account, although they denied that they delayed making the improvement, saying they only had to wait for myriad government approvals to complete the project.

Many businesses are far more intransigent, though.

At a Van Nuys auto repair business, an employee who asked not to be identified said his parking lot is hosed down once a month. As he hurriedly attended to spilled transmission fluid, he said storm drain runoff doesn’t bother him. “I never go the beach,” he said. “I go to the mountains.”

On Anaheim Street in Long Beach, meanwhile, a stream of soapy water could be traced to a hose in the hand of the neighborhood butcher. Wearing a white apron and smoking a cigarette, he washed the mornings trimmings from his floor into the street.

He declined to give his name but insisted that he had to use the hose “because of inspection regulations.” He declined to elaborate.

At his family-run meat market in Pacoima, Richard Silva, 39, said he would like to have a vacuum truck come to clean the business’ parking lot, as he did in more flush times a decade ago.

Now he occasionally hires a homeless person to sweep around the lot. He said the rain would take care of the grease and oil stains that dotted the parking area, “washing it down on its own.”

With the market struggling, Silva worried about the added cost of new regulations. “I believe in a safe environment,” he said. “But at this time there’s no way we can afford what they’re asking.”

Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein and Abigail Goodman and community correspondents John Cox and Steven Herbert contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Turning the Tide of Pollution

The approval of a countywide plan to curb pollution in Santa Monica and San Pedro bays means hat residents and business owners need to adopt new urban hygiene practices.

Residents should:

* Put pet waste in the trash; don’t wash it into the gutter.

* Use low- toxicity pesticides and fertilizers.

* Make sure car oil, gas or coolant does not leak onto the street.

Bussinesses should:

* Clean restaurant floor mats and containers in a sink or drain that empties into the sewer, not the storm drain.

* Increase landscaping and use permeable materials in parking lots.

* Mop up gas station and auto repair work areas instead of hosing debris into streets.

Cities should:

* Inform businesses of new rules outlawing dumping into storm drains.

* Clean out storm drain catch basins yearly.

* Initiate programs to eliminate illegal storm drain hookups.

* Sweep all curbed streets at least monthly.

Underground to Underwater: How the System Works

Los Angeles County’s storm-drain system flows directly into the ocean without going through the treatment facilities. Used motor oil, for example, dumped into a street gutter miles away, can directly pollute the ocean.