Cleaner Beaches, Drop by Drop

Los Angeles County took a major step Wednesday toward cleaner beaches when the region’s water quality board adopted tough standards to reduce urban runoff. The county now joins a handful of localities nationwide taking such aggressive steps against this pervasive pollution issue. Enforcing the new rules is the next challenge.

The culprits behind this knotty problem are oily wastes, metal residues, pet feces, pesticides and a thousand other things that wash off streets, roofs and parking lots into storm drains and out to the ocean. Runoff travels almost everywhere, and that’s what makes cleaning it up so hard. In addition to fouling beaches, it contains viruses and bacteria that can infect swimmers.

Runoff pollution is particularly severe in the crowded Los Angeles Basin--so many people, so much gunk. The cleanup will be hard for the county’s cities, but the responsibility for preventing runoff lies with municipalities under the federal Clean Water Act, which says they must prevent it “to the maximum extent practicable.”

One set of measures approved by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, a state agency, will require new building projects across the county to limit the runoff they generate. The rules apply to new parking lots with 25 or more spaces and commercial projects of more than 100,000 square feet, as well as gas stations, auto repair garages, restaurants of more than 5,000 square feet and subdivisions with at least 10 houses.

Each project must collect or filter runoff from the first three-quarters of an inch of rainfall in a 24-hour period because that’s when most pollutants are washed off. Developers can build retention ponds and trenches to collect storm water and install filters in curbside drains or leave grassed-over low spots. The water quality board puts the cost of these options for a typical five-acre, $6.5-million commercial project at between $1,500 and $28,800.

Since they will be required only on new projects, these remedies won’t cut existing runoff; however, they should keep it from worsening. That would be a major accomplishment--but one that private developers and many smaller cities in the county have long resisted. Los Angeles, Santa Monica and West Hollywood were among the few cities endorsing the new standards.

Now, with the board’s vote, all cities will be required to adopt ordinances within six months to implement the standards and ensure compliance by developers. From Malibu to Long Beach, these rules will lead to cleaner coastal waters.