Cleanup OKd for Waterways in L.A. Area

In a far-reaching decision that could eventually force sweeping lifestyle changes for millions of people, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to set pollution limits that aim to make all beaches and waterways throughout Los Angeles and Ventura counties safe for people and aquatic life.

The EPA’s agreement--which settles a lawsuit filed by the environmental groups Heal the Bay and Santa Monica BayKeeper--is considered a momentous event in the decades-long struggle to clean up Santa Monica Bay and a slew of highly polluted rivers, creeks and lakes. The accord comes after the EPA for 20 years failed to ensure that the waters were safe and clean, as mandated by federal law.

Ultimately, said Mark Gold, executive director of Heal the Bay, the new strategy will guide everything from how subdivisions are built and streets are cleaned to the quality of waste discharged by sewage treatment plants.

“This is a very, very far-reaching action. The ramifications are far beyond setting a number and hoping we reach it,” Gold said. “This completely changes the game on how water quality is regulated.”

The new limits are to be set gradually over 13 years, beginning with one this December. The goal is for beaches and more than 130 water courses, including the Los Angeles, San Gabriel and Santa Clara rivers, to be safe for recreation--swimming, surfing and fishing--as well as protective of creatures that live there.

The agreement is not expected to have an immediate effect on Orange County waterways.

From lead and copper to feces and trash, standards called “total maximum daily loads” will define precisely how much of each pollutant a water segment can withstand daily. Cities, industries, sewage treatment plants and other sources that cause the pollution will be allowed to generate a specific share of that total.

Officials will now be forced to address all the pollution problems of each watershed as a whole, especially storm water runoff--the massive volume of oil, metals, bacteria and other debris that flows into rivers and the ocean from streets, freeways, yards and other urban surfaces. In the past, state agencies have issued one permit at a time to each industry and sewage plant and have done little to clean up runoff.

“This is cutting-edge stuff, especially in an urban context,” said the EPA’s regional administrator, Felicia Marcus. “It means people can look forward to even cleaner waters to enjoy in the future.”

No One Knows What Limits Will Be

The prospect of the unprecedented limits, however, worries many municipalities, sewage treatment officials and others who must eventually comply.

A coalition of county and city sanitation districts plans to file a motion this week in federal court to intervene and block the agreement.

The overriding concern is the uncertainty--no ones knows what the limits will be, what it could cost to comply, and whether there are any viable solutions to reduce the contamination, said Sharon Green, government affairs analyst of the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts.

“We hope it will lead to water quality improvements, but we’re concerned about it leading to requirements that simply cannot be met or that will require costly treatment,” she said.

Los Angeles Councilwoman Ruth Galanter plans to ask the council today to “bless the agreement” and refuse to let the city participate in legal challenges.

“Cleaner water means improved quality of life, not only for the people who live here but those who visit here,” she said. “It would send a really terrible message for the city to turn around and say we don’t care about clean water.”

State Officials Expected to Set Standards

The task is gargantuan--assigning about 750 specific pollution limits--but EPA officials agreed to deadlines that will be phased in through 2011. The beaches, Malibu Creek and the Los Angeles River will be among the first to be tackled.

State water quality officials are expected to set the limits, but the EPA will oversee the procedure. The deadlines, however, are only for when the limits will be set, not when they will be complied with--which could take years longer.

“This is a road map that gets us to clean water,” said David Beckman, a Natural Resources Defense Council attorney who represented the environmentalists. “It’s not the end, but it’s the beginning of the end.”

Dennis Dickerson, executive officer of the state’s Regional Water Quality Board for the two counties, called the new approach “a very essential way to go.”

“We generally see this as a very positive development,” he said. The limits “are very labor-intensive and rather an arduous process, but we are very committed to doing them and we intend to make them work.”

The Clean Water Act required the pollution limits to be set by 1979 for all waters in the United States that are considered unsafe for people and aquatic life.

But 20 years past that deadline, the EPA and the state have not set a single limit for any of the 156 water body segments that are polluted in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Beckman said the EPA “did absolutely nothing” on that issue.

EPA officials say they failed to set the limits because they wanted to first address the nation’s most pressing water pollution problems--through two decades of costly and controversial cleanup at sewage treatment plants and industries across the country.

Now that those threats are largely resolved, regional EPA administrator Marcus said, it is time to address the multitude of sources--especially urban streets--that are still keeping so many waters unsafe.

“Times have changed, and watershed planning is now the way to go,” she said. “It would have been hard to do this the right way 20 years ago, but people now are ready to do it.”

Even though thousands of U.S. waterways violate the Clean Water Act, only a scattering of limits have been set elsewhere in the country, including Oregon and Georgia. Southern California lags behind largely because of the enormity of dealing with urban waters contaminated by bacteria-laden street runoff from millions of people.

Los Angeles and Ventura counties “are not alone. Many other states and most of California have not pursued” the limits, water board official Dickerson said.

Environmentalists have filed similar lawsuits in 29 other states, including 12 where the EPA faces a court order to develop the permits, Beckman said.

Beaches in much of Los Angeles County are frequently closed to swimming because of fecal waste from runoff. A few years ago, a USC study showed that people who swim at beaches near storm drains have a nearly 50% increase in colds, diarrhea and other illnesses soon after swimming.

The government has less than three years to set the pollution limits that aim to make beaches in Los Angeles County safe for swimming, and less than four years for Ventura County. About 100 cities contribute to the coliform bacteria count--a sign of human or animal waste in runoff.

The most challenging part of all the new limits will be the bacteria and viruses at beaches because no one knows where, precisely, they come from. This also is one of the most critical aspects of the cleanup because polluted beaches have a big impact on public health and the local economy.

But there is far more than the ocean at stake. About 130 urban rivers, creeks, lakes and other waters in the two counties contain excessive amounts of some form of pollution that makes them unsafe for swimming, fishing or aquatic life.

The new strategy means divvying up the pollution load. Cleaning up the contamination will now become more like the region’s program to clean up smog--a certain level of pollution is deemed healthful, then officials regulate virtually everything that contributes.

For example, Ballona Creek, which flows from downtown Los Angeles to the ocean at Marina del Rey, contains hazardous amounts of zinc, copper, lead and three other metals. Under the agreement, a maximum will be set by late 2003 for each pollutant and specific allocations will be made for each of the various industries, Los Angeles County and the four cities of Los Angeles, Culver City, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

At Malibu Creek, a limit will be set by December 2001 for algae-creating nutrients such as nitrogen that come from sewage and fertilizer. Cities and grazing operations upstream will be allocated certain shares.

In Ventura County, Calleguas Creek is a highly contaminated waterway containing metals, pesticides and other compounds. An overall limit will be set for each one, and then allocations will be made to the upstream farms, cities, sewage treatment plants and industries.

Deal May Ease Load on Some Polluters

Controversies and legal challenges are bound to erupt over how the state or EPA sets the individual limits. However, the new strategy might actually ease the burden on polluters, called point sources, that have already been highly regulated--such as the Chevron oil refinery in El Segundo and sewage treatment plants. Instead, more of the burden might be put on cities and agriculture.

“It means finally there will be an equitable distribution, a responsibility that matches contribution,” Beckman said.

But Green of the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts worries that much of the burden could still fall on the sewage treatment plants because it will be too complicated to deal with urban runoff that comes from all over the region.

Environmentalists wanted nearer deadlines, but they said those in the agreement were the best they could negotiate with the EPA because of limits on government resources.