Runoff Rules Get Tougher

State water officials adopted tough new urban runoff cleanup rules Thursday for the Los Angeles area to reduce the toxic stew of grease, metals, fertilizer and other waste that spills from storm channels into the ocean.

For the first time, Los Angeles County and 84 of its cities will be required to help inspect gas stations, restaurants, car repair shops and manufacturing plants known to contribute a disproportionate share of pollutants swept by storm water into Santa Monica and San Pedro bays.

Besides pinpointing illegal discharges, county and city officials will be required to monitor pollutants carried by rivers and streams and sweep their streets more often to keep them clean.

“There is no doubt that urban runoff is a threat to the health of our coastal waters,” said H. David Nahai, chairman of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, which unanimously adopted the regulations. “This is a decisive step in the right direction.”

The new five-year plan was approved over the objections of many city officials. More than a third of the 84 cities covered by the rules formed a coalition to oppose the requirements, calling them “too expensive, onerous and illegal.”

Representatives of those 35 cities said the rules will require them to raise taxes to pay for added enforcement, inspections and programs that should rightly be funded by the state.

“We are not the culprits causing the pollution. We are just the ones left holding the bag,” said Richard Montevideo, an attorney for the Coalition for Practical Regulation.

Opponents vowed to appeal the matter to state water officials in Sacramento.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, applauded the action, saying the requirements were long overdue after more than a decade of concessions to cities and industries in previous storm water cleanup plans.

“They’ve had it their way for 10 years, and it hasn’t worked,” said David Beckman, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This time we think it’s time to make meaningful progress toward cleaning up the No. 1 source of [ocean] pollution.”

Like other urban areas across the nation, Los Angeles County and the 85 cities are required to adopt storm water cleanup plans, as part of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, under the federal Clean Water Act.

The first such five-year plan was adopted in 1990 by the regional water board to deal with residue from urban life that washes off lawns, down streets and from businesses into storm drains and then out to sea.

The board updated the plan in 1996, doing some rule tightening over the complaints of two dozen cities. Long Beach was so incensed that it filed a lawsuit. In settling that suit, the city agreed to abide by an even more rigid storm water cleanup plan than other cities in Los Angeles County.

San Diego County, parts of the San Francisco Bay Area and other regions adopted tough storm water rules before Los Angeles County, which experts say probably has the most polluted waters in the nation.

In San Diego County, some local officials appealed their case to Sacramento, only to find that the state water board backed the regional panel. California has nine such regional boards, state entities that oversee the quality of ground and surface water, including the watersheds that drain into the ocean.

State water officials in Los Angeles and Sacramento have come under increasing pressure by environmental activists, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and federal courts to crack down on pollution that befouls coastal waters.

Even the Los Angeles County Grand Jury got into the act. In September it completed an investigation into the health risks of swimming near beaches in the county and recommended that the regional water board start setting limits on contaminants.

The new storm water plan doesn’t go that far, said Dennis Dickerson, executive director of the regional board in Los Angeles. “We are simply asking the cities to be partners with us in inspecting various sites that may be contributing to storm water pollution,” he said.

The Clean Water Act has required waters to be safe for aquatic life and human uses such as swimming and fishing since Congress passed the measure in 1972. Yet, over the last 15 years, the EPA has required municipalities to clean up storm water runoff only “to the maximum extent practicable.”

With the new rules, the regional water board for the first time will be in compliance with EPA’s interpretation of the Clean Water Act, said Laura Gentile, an EPA scientist who oversees the region.

Southern California has lagged behind many other urban areas, because of local resistance and the enormous cost of trying to clean up countless sources of pollution. In Los Angeles County alone, pollution from 10 million people drains into the ocean along 70 miles of coastline.

State and city officials cannot agree on how much they now spend on cleanup efforts or how much the costs will go up under the new rules. They do agree that they will rise.

Much of the new inspection work can be handled by existing building inspectors and other government workers, said Wendy Phillips, assistant executive director of the water board. “The cities are not going to have to hire armies of inspectors,” she said.

Under the new rules, county and city officials will have to inspect about one-third of the restaurants, gas stations, industrial sites and other suspected polluters within their jurisdictions. The state will inspect the other two-thirds.

City officials will have to make sure gas stations are properly handling spills, disposing of waste and preventing hazardous materials from being washed into gutters and then into storm drains. At restaurants, inspectors will insist that workers clean greasy, bacteria-laden floor mats inside, rather than hosing them off outside.

Such inspections will be required at least twice over the next five years. Previously, cities were required only to hand out pamphlets on “educational site visits” to suspected polluters.

City and county officials will also have to map all illegal discharges or connections into storm drains, order them to be removed and report such violations to state authorities.

Cities will now have to sweep their streets more frequently as well as clean out catch basins designed to trap trash and other debris before it finds it way through storm channels to the ocean.

City and county officials will also, for the first time, be required to clean up after parades and other special events that leave behind trash and other residue on the streets.

Finally, local officials will have to conduct more testing for water pollution in streams, rivers and the ocean to learn which ones pose the biggest problems.