Storm Drain Stewards Sought to Help Stem Ocean-Polluting Runoff

The program’s name is bound to provoke snickers, but the leaders who unveiled the Adopt-A-Stormdrain project in Redondo Beach on Wednesday have a serious mission: to help stem the staggering flow of ocean-polluting runoff at California’s beaches.

Modeled on the high-visibility Adopt-A-Highway program that for years has removed tons of litter from the nation’s roads, the drain project seeks to team corporations with local governments, environmentalists and private donors to attack a problem that has long sickened swimmers and harmed sea life.

The money raised by the project will go for public awareness and education, to clean catch basins, scrub parking lots and install pollution-reducing devices along various stretches of storm drain systems. Donors will get their names on modestly sized “Cleaner Storm Drains, Cleaner Oceans” signs to be posted along the system.

Filthy runoff--containing animal feces, pesticides, oils from parking lots and toxics from cleaning solutions--are carried to the sea in a maze of pipes, rivers and flood-control channels. That is the major cause of pollution at the nation’s beaches. Los Angeles County suffers the worst urban runoff problem in the country, officials say, despite increased regulation and cleanup efforts.

“This program brings together cities, the communities and corporations. It helps take some of the pressure off the taxpayers . . . and really moves this issue forward,” Paul Polizzotto, founder and president of the nonprofit Adopt-A-Stormdrain program, said at a news conference to launch the project.

Polizzotto, whose interest in storm drains grew from his surfing and from the “environmentally compliant” industrial cleaning company he helped found, developed a plan through which corporations and individual donors can contribute money. Most of those funds will go directly to participating cities.

“I’m happy to say we’ve taken the lead,” said Redondo Beach Mayor Greg Hill, whose city this week became the first to sign up. “I challenge all the cities in Southern California . . . to consider this program as something they should adopt as well.”

First corporate sponsor to sign up was the Chevron El Segundo Refinery, followed by AES, which operates an electrical power generating station in Redondo Beach, TRW and Good Stuff restaurants in nearby Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach. How much they will give and to which cities has yet to be determined, officials said.

Touting the program at Wednesday’s news conference was Rep. Jane Harman (D-Redondo Beach), who called Adopt-A-Stormdrain a creative approach to a complicated challenge--and put in a plug for more corporate participation.

“This is a great way for business to help make our beaches safe places to swim and play,” Harman said.

About 64 billion gallons of toxic runoff flowed into Southern California’s largest rivers and creeks during 1972. By 1995, that amount had risen to 800 billion gallons, according to the Southern California Coastal Research Project. Earlier this month, the Natural Resources Defense Council released a report showing the number of beach closures because of polluted runoff nearly doubled last year.

Given that, Polizzotto acknowledged, the new program is just a drop in the, um, storm drain.

“But if we all work together, we can solve this problem,” Polizzotto said.

Polizzotto chose as the setting for the program’s kickoff news conference the S.E.A. (for Science, Education, Adventure) Laboratory in Redondo Beach, which provides a home and breeding grounds for some of Santa Monica Bay’s struggling sea creatures.

As officials talked about their program, children leaned over the lab’s tide pool in its outdoor patio, watching the halibut, bat rays, opal-eye and horn shark.

Govanna Vazquez, 11, has been coming to classes at the lab weekly this summer with youngsters from Esperanza Community Housing in Los Angeles. Govanna knows all about the importance of storm drains.

“People need to pick up their trash and not throw it in the street,” Govanna said. And although she likes going to the beach, she knows it is not always safe to go in the water.

“I don’t want to go in when it makes you sick,” she said.