Attacking Polluted Runoff

Her days are already littered with stray cigarette butts and cars spewing oil, and it’s only going to get worse for Heather Lea Merenda, the keeper of the storm drains in Calabasas.

Calabasas is hardly a haven for shifty-eyed litterbugs. But Merenda still finds plenty of paint, garbage and other gunk washing into drains meant only for rain. The contaminants flow into creeks that snake down through the mountains and into the sea.

And now, the rules for keeping storm water clean are about to get a lot tougher. Regional water quality officials are for the first time drafting strict limits on all kinds of pollutants fouling the creeks and beaches in Los Angeles County, to be phased in over the next 12 years. In July, they plan to begin issuing storm water permits to the county and its cities, permits that may contain some of the new restrictions.

“I don’t know how we’re going to meet this requirement,” Merenda said with a sigh, as she surveyed a storm drain clogged with leaves. “It assumes I have control over everything that drains here.”

The grimy runoff from Malibu and other areas in the Malibu Creek Watershed has helped make Surfrider Beach in Malibu one of the most polluted shorelines in Southern California. Recent studies have fingered other culprits as well, including Malibu’s leaky septic tanks and the Tapia sewage treatment plant, which discharges treated waste water into Malibu Creek during the winter.

Packed with people on a sprawling landscape of pavement, Los Angeles County suffers from one of the nation’s worst urban runoff problems. The federal Clean Water Act mandated controls on runoff 14 years ago, but Southern California has lagged behind in programs to divert pollution from the ocean.

Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agreed to set the pollution limits to clean up waterways and beaches in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, ending a lawsuit filed by environmental groups.

Calabasas, an upscale hamlet noted for its environmentally minded City Council, is ahead of the pack when it comes to handling storm water runoff, a watery stew of pesticides, metal residue, human viruses and bacteria.

Two years ago, the city hired Merenda as its full-time storm water manager--the only one in the Malibu Creek watershed, a 110-square-mile area that drains into Santa Monica Bay. A few months later, Calabasas officials installed a $300,000 device that’s supposed to keep garbage from washing into Las Virgenes Creek, one of Malibu Creek’s tributaries.

But troubled waters persist, hinting at the problems other cities may face as they attempt to clean up. Calabasas’ trash-trapping mechanism, a 20-foot-deep pit lined with mesh screens to catch debris, hasn’t worked as well as expected.

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Part of the problem, Merenda said, is that the state-of-the-art device is simply too big. City officials plunked it down in what could be considered one of the grubbiest spots in generally spiffy Calabasas--the corner of Las Virgenes and Agoura roads, near a cluster of fast-food restaurants and gas stations just off the Ventura Freeway. But even this litter-prone area has only yielded about half the trash the equipment is designed to handle.

And garbage is still creeping into the creek in other places. In September, volunteers hauled about half a ton of debris out of nearby sections of Las Virgenes Creek that aren’t covered by the trash-catching unit, Merenda said.

Farther downstream, Malibu has launched one of the most ambitious and expensive efforts to treat storm water in the Malibu Creek watershed. If it works, it would kill bacteria and viruses, a big step beyond merely screening out clumps of garbage.

But the demonstration project--a $1-million machine that disinfects storm drain runoff by bombarding it with ozone and ultraviolet light--got off to a rocky start.

The first attempt to install the high-tech contraption a few months ago bombed when the machine sprang a leak on the eve of the ribbon-cutting ceremony. City officials are now eagerly awaiting the delivery of a replacement, expected next week.

“I see the use of disinfecting as revolutionary,” Malibu City Engineer Rick Morgan said. “It’s the only thing that’s going to address the real pollutants of concern”--the pathogens that make swimmers and surfers sick.

Calabasas and many other cities are closely watching the Malibu effort. Morgan said he fields frequent calls from storm water officials around the region, all seeking solutions to the gooey problem of urban runoff.

Even if the Malibu project succeeds, the disinfecting machine is an end-of-pipe solution that may not be practical or affordable for hundreds of storm drains throughout the county. Some officials say that solving the runoff problem will require a massive behavior shift on the part of millions of people--whose cars and lawns and pets are all contaminating the water.

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Despite the setbacks, environmental regulators applaud the attempts of Calabasas and other cities to scrub clean their storm water.

“I think we are a little bit late in trying to address the problems, but I welcome the leading efforts in those cities,” said Xavier Swamikannu, chief of the storm water program at the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, which is setting the new pollution limits. “There’s a start-up period where things can go wrong . . . but somebody has to lead the way.”