Water Officials Stick to Guns on Cleanup Order

Water quality officials Wednesday refused to delay a cleanup order for Aliso Creek despite arguments presented by Laguna Niguel and Orange County in a public hearing.

Buoyed by testimony from several environmentalists and praise from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, California Regional Water Quality Control Board members meeting in San Diego unanimously upheld their Dec. 28 order and declined to push back an impending deadline--a move not unexpected by local officials appealing the mandate. The board has jurisdiction over part of South County.

“I can’t say we were really optimistic,” said Tim Casey, Laguna Niguel’s city manager.

The cleanup order directs Laguna Niguel, the county and the county’s flood control district to clean up the creek, prevent future pollution, submit a work plan to the board by Friday, monitor water quality weekly and submit quarterly progress reports. The three agencies face fines of up to $5,000 per day or lawsuits if they fail to comply.

Local officials disputed the board’s findings, including charges that they knew about sewage flowing into the creek, one of the county’s most polluted waterways, and did nothing about the problem. The cleanup order will kill state funding for water projects and get in the way of local efforts--public-education campaigns, diversion of some urban runoff and removal of sludge from a storm water collection basin--that are showing results, they said at the hearing.

Aliso Creek drains more than 34 square miles from the Santa Ana Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Pollution problems have plagued the watershed, especially near a storm channel that receives runoff from the Kite Hill neighborhood.

Urban runoff--trash, chemicals and pollutants washed off streets and lawns into storm drains and area waterways--is also a perpetual problem. The creek empties into the ocean in Laguna Beach, where swimmers are frequently warned of health risks.

Vicki L. Wilson, director of county public facilities, said efforts by Laguna Niguel to clean up the creek are working: Bacteria counts near the storm channel met water quality standards for the first week of February. For this reason, she said, the board ought to delay its action to see if a cleanup order is necessary.

“Let’s monitor it for 30 or 60 days and see if our activity has caused the discharge to meet acceptable levels,” said Patricia L. Shanks, an attorney representing the county and the city. “If it has, we can all applaud, be glad and go home.”

However, water quality standards are measured in 30-day averages, and January’s levels contained nearly four times the allowable amount of fecal coliform, county statistics show.

Ken Montgomery, Laguna Niguel’s director of public works, also presented two potential projects that will be included in the work plan. The first, diverting low flows to the Moulton Niguel Water District treatment plant, may not be viable, according to waste water officials. The second, building a riprap filter near the storm channel, is still a concept that must be designed.

Though local officials described Wednesday’s hearing as an educational session, they have been setting the stage for a bureaucratic battle by asking the State Water Resources Control Board--the regional board’s parent agency--to overturn the cleanup order. Shanks said the local agencies filed petitions to preserve their right to appeal, but haven’t yet decided to pursue it.

Environmentalists representing the Orange County CoastKeeper, the San Diego BayKeeper, the local Surfrider Foundation chapter, the Clean Aliso Creek Assn. and other groups also testified at the hearing. Many remained concerned that all this talk and study are not leading to any action and that the cleanup order lacked “teeth.”

“It looks like the order is virtually impossible to enforce,” said Daniel Cooper, a San Francisco attorney who represents the CoastKeeper, citing a lack of specific cleanup requirements.

But board members and an EPA engineer said the order was effective because it keeps the issue--and elected officials’ actions--in the spotlight.