Tentative Plan on Toxic Runoff May End Feud

Ending a three-year fight over implementation of the federal Clean Water Act, the city of Long Beach has reached a tentative agreement with state water officials over a plan to deal with toxic storm water plaguing Santa Monica and San Pedro bays.

The proposed plan, expected to be ratified at a meeting of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board on Wednesday, has the agreement of all sides in the nasty dispute.

Acceptance of the agreement would settle a lawsuit filed by Long Beach that has held up full implementation of a countywide storm water cleanup plan. The plan was initially approved in 1996 and agreed to by 84 cities, including Santa Monica and Los Angeles, as well as the county of Los Angeles.

Designed to handle toxic contamination threatening 70 miles of Los Angeles County coastline, it calls for such things as periodic washing of grease and oil from parking lots and educating business operators and others on ways to avoid releasing pollutants into storm drains.

Some of the 84 cities that had signed the original storm water plan adopted a wait-and-see attitude after it was challenged by Long Beach, environmentalist critics say.

“Long Beach’s opposition gave cover to those cities who wanted to slow the program down,” said David Beckman, an attorney with the Los Angeles office of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Here we are, three years into a permit with a five-year term, and it is still not fully developed.”

Long Beach, covering 50 square miles, lies at the mouth of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers. With storm drain systems of dozens of cities feeding into the two rivers, and then into San Pedro Bay, pollution of local waterways has been a long-standing problem. Compounding the problem is pollution generated by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and by oil refineries in Wilmington and Carson.

Last week, Long Beach officials were overjoyed when the environmental organization Heal the Bay gave the city’s beaches nearly straight A’s in its grading system, but the regional water board has identified a host of pollution problems linked to the rivers, flood control channels and San Pedro and Alamitos bays.

State water officials say that pollutants commonly found in storm water include pathogens, heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides and synthetic organic compounds such as fuels, waste oil, solvents, lubricants and grease, all of which pose a health threat to humans and endanger aquatic ecosystems.

Under the proposed agreement, which goes further than the original agreement, Long Beach would be required to draft a storm water management program that covers such things as mitigation of runoff for new commercial and residential construction, and a program to identify and crack down on illegal discharges.

For the first time, Long Beach would be required to set up monitoring stations to test levels of oil and grease, bacteria and fecal matter, hydrocarbons and other chemicals pouring into storm drains and then into local waters. Under the new rules, the city will be required to test for more than 170 different pollutants.

As for the proposed settlement, both sides say that they are happy.

Long Beach’s opposition to the initial plan centered on arguments by city officials that they could come up with a better plan, with a lower expenditure of tax dollars, than was possible under a uniform countywide plan.

Rough guesses at the cost of the original ran as high as $3.5 million for Long Beach in first year. The new plan could cost considerably less, according to estimates.

“It’s a good plan for the city of Long Beach,” said Rose Collins, director of the city’s clean water program, who argues that a one-size-fits-all plan to combat the storm water problem doesn’t make sense.

City Atty. Robert E. Shannon, who oversaw the city’s efforts to settle the dispute, said he thought the agreement might serve as a model for other cities.

“When the day is done, I think Long Beach’s permit will be a paradigm for other permits. Long Beach worked very hard to meet the concerns of environmentalists during negotiations,” Shannon said.

Criticism From L.A. Officials

Not everyone is pleased.

Los Angeles Sanitation Director Judith A. Wilson complained in a letter to Dennis Dickerson, executive director of the water quality control board, that the city is “very concerned” that stricter regulations may be imposed on cities based on the Long Beach agreement.

Part of Long Beach’s plan calls for semimonthly street sweeping, which city officials believe reduces the problem of toxic substances washing into storm drains. That is not a problem for Long Beach, which already sweeps city streets at least once a week. But for Los Angeles, which has 75% of the city on a monthly street sweeping program, adoption of a twice-monthly standard could be costly.

Wilson said a Los Angeles study showed street sweeping did little to reduce storm water pollution. The sanitation director also disputed the contention that Long Beach’s lawsuit slowed down implementation of the 1996 plan, at least in Los Angeles. She said the city will be in full compliance by its July 30 deadline.

Dickerson said the storm water permit “is solely applicable to Long Beach,” but could trigger efforts by other cities to apply for individual permits.

Since the deadline for compliance with the 1996 plan is not until July 30, Dickerson said it is too early to tell whether cities have been delaying implementation.

“The bottom line is, this is a step forward for cleaner water,” he said.

Environmental activists in Long Beach have long been critical of the city’s challenge of the countywide plan. For years, the city has argued that its pollution was caused by flows into the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers by upstream cities. Then, when a countywide plan was in place to address the problem, city officials fought it for three years, which undermined their arguments, critics say.

“I am very disgusted that the city chose the litigation route rather than conform its plan with the rest of the cities,” said David Sunstrom, who is head of an environmental task force working on a new general plan.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Storm Water

Management

Under terms of the proposed agreement between Long Beach and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, the city must draft a storm water management program. It requires:

* Control of illegal discharges of pollutants.

* Tighter regulations on any new large-scale residential or commercial construction, including preparation of storm water mitigation plans by developers and retention of water on-site in 25% of any newly landscaped areas.

* Creation of a monitoring program to detect more than 170 different pollutants entering waterways, including oil, grease, bacteria, fecal matter and hydrocarbons.

* Annual storm water reports detailing levels of water quality.

* Establishment of a public information campaign aimed at developers, residents and schoolchildren.