Storm Drain Diversions to Cut Bay Pollution Planned

Los Angeles County is launching a project to help eradicate one of Southern California’s most intractable problems--the polluted storm drain runoff that sickens swimmers in Santa Monica Bay and closes beaches during the crowded summer months.

The county Department of Public Works will begin building its first storm drain diversion system near King Harbor in Redondo Beach as early as next month, officials said Wednesday.

It is also planning to begin building at least three more diversion systems at bacteria hot spots around the bay later this year. The county picked the storm drains that it says have the most pollution and spill into beaches with the highest concentrations of swimmers who could get sick from high bacteria counts. Tens of thousands of beach-goers visit these beaches each summer weekend.

The projects will be completed between 2000 and 2002.

The city of Los Angeles is about to start testing a storm drain diversion system of its own in Venice, with at least one more project on the way in another high-density area. In all, there are fewer than 70 storm drains emptying into the 50 miles of coastline along Santa Monica Bay, many of them in out of the way areas that do not affect many swimmers.

“This is a very big step in the right direction,” said Menerva Daoud, director of the Public Works Department’s Environmental Programs Division. “You won’t hear on the news, ‘Don’t go to the beach, it’s dangerous! Pollution!’ You won’t have to worry about going into the water in the summer months.”

When built, the diversion systems aim to use simple technology--a few connecting pipes and filters--to stop much of the so-called urban runoff from surging through major storm drains and being dumped onto beaches or directly into the ocean. Instead, the runoff will be diverted into the existing sewage treatment systems run by the county and the city so it can be processed and stripped of its toxic substances before being dispatched into the ocean at points much farther out to sea.

Right now, the trash, debris, motor oil, fertilizers, pesticides and animal droppings that are swept into the storm drains often spill out on the other end--sometimes within a few feet of where swimmers splash and surfers ride the waves. At the King Harbor storm drain alone, more than 30,000 gallons of tainted runoff enter the water every day, according to Daoud and other officials in the Public Works Department’s storm water / urban runoff program, Daoud said.

And it isn’t just an eyesore.

Studies have shown that those swimming near the storm drains run a high risk of getting sick. Many suffer from stomach flu, upper respiratory infections, skin rashes, fever, nausea, coughs and diarrhea. The runoff also kills marine life and pollutes the beaches in spots where the storm drains open onto the sand instead of directly into the water--so much so that the county of Los Angeles spent $1.3 million cleaning debris off the sand after storms between July 1, 1997, and June 30, 1998.

During dry weather, the pollutants build up in the storm drains and are flushed into the waterways when it rains, or when a lot of people water their lawns or wash their cars.

Technique Likely to Be Extended

The county isn’t the first to fund such storm water diversion projects. Two drains in Santa Monica and one in Manhattan Beach are already being diverted into the sewer system, according to Mark Gold, executive director of the environmental group Heal the Bay.

But Gold said the county and city efforts indicate that storm drain diversion will become far more widespread in the coming years. And that, he says, is something the nonprofit watchdog agency and other environmentalists have been advocating for a long time.

“These things are finally going in, and not a moment too soon to protect the public health of the 50 million swimmers in Santa Monica Bay annually,” Gold said. “This will turn beaches that are getting [health grades of ] Cs, Ds and Fs into A beaches in the summer.”

“This is definitely going to clean up one of those beaches that has had a notorious reputation for being too bad for swimming,” Gold said.

The diversions will only be made in the spring and summer because the local sewer system pipes are too small to accommodate the volume that comes with the winter rains.

But because most swimmers are in the water in the warmer, dry weather, Gold and other environmental advocates said the diversion projects will protect those most at risk of getting sick.

The county diversion projects will be paid for with Proposition A funds, which voters approved in 1992 to provide money for local governments to clean up the bay and undertake other improvement projects. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved spending $86,000 from the Proposition A grant fund on the Redondo Beach diversion project. Each of the projects will cost about $244,000.

Getting the money to pay for the projects was just a small part of the effort. The reason it took so long, Daoud and others said, was because of the multi-agency bureaucratic wrangling that went on over the years over where to divert the runoff.

Daoud said the county expects to award contracts for the three remaining projects by the end of next month. If approved, they will be built at the Ashland Avenue storm drain in Santa Monica, and at the Pershing Drive and Brooks Avenue storm drains in Los Angeles.

Once the Redondo Beach system is completed, Daoud said, the runoff from parts of Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach and Torrance that converge at the King Harbor drain will instead be sent to the sanitation district’s treatment plant in Carson.

Meanwhile, the city of Los Angeles has completed construction of its first diversion project at the Thornton Avenue storm drain and is putting it through tests before starting it up sometime in July, said Gary Moore, storm water program manager for the city’s Bureau of Sanitation.

The city also is planning to divert the runoff from a drain near the Bay Club just north of Santa Monica, Moore said. And, he said, Mayor Richard Riordan has proposed funding four other low-flow diversion projects; two at Dockweiler State Beach and one each at Palisades Park and Pulga Canyon, which both are north of Santa Monica.

Like county officials, Moore expects the diversion efforts will have an immediate impact on quality of water at beaches in Santa Monica Bay.

And that excites lifeguards like Randy DeGregori, who has worked in the waters of Santa Monica Bay since the 1970s. Now chief lifeguard for Los Angeles County, DeGregori remembers when the water was so polluted “you couldn’t even see the sand” from several feet away. In recent years, he said, the runoff would stink, and be filled with debris and trash, so much so that lifeguards frequently post signs saying, “Warning: Storm Drain Runoff May Cause Illness” along the sand.

“I think it’s going to improve the water quality when and where it counts, when the masses of people come down here,” DeGregori said. “I use the water every day, and I appreciate the clean water.”

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Bay Cleanup Effort

The county and city of Los Angeles are embarking on a series of storm drain diversion projects to prevent polluted runoff from entering Santa Monica Bay. Here are the areas where the runoff from the storm drains usually empties into the bay.