Interagency Spats Muddy the Waters

Californians want clean water. They want beaches and wetlands protected. They want quality water coming from their taps. And they are willing to pay for it.

Voters have consistently demonstrated their commitment to clean water and coastal protection at the polls over the last few years, most recently in approving, last month, the Water Security, Clean Drinking Water, Coastal and Beach Protection Act of 2002, which allocates $3.4 billion for purchasing and restoring wetlands and watersheds and for funding water projects that will both protect the supply and improve quality. In the last two years, Californians have voted to spend more than $8 billion on clean water and coastal resource protection.

So if voters are in agreement, even during tough economic times, why can’t the agencies and regional governments responsible for solving our water quality problems get along? Instead of taking the voters’ strong message to heart, those most closely involved with water issues are ever more bitterly divided.

The EPA in Washington doesn’t see eye to eye with its regional EPA office in San Francisco, which isn’t getting along with the state Water Resources Control Board in Sacra- mento, which in turn disagrees on many issues with the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. The regional water board gets along with the environmental community on some issues but not all.

Los Angeles County, numerous small cities, the Western States Petroleum Assn., the California Building Industry Assn., the L.A. County Sanitation Districts and the city of Los Angeles are sparring with the regional water board, state water board, EPA or the environmental community on most issues.

Pick your water quality issue, and you’ll find the regulatory community at odds with the regulated community that is in turn at odds with the public and community-based organizations. The level of distrust and animosity on water quality issues has reached a level not seen since the 1980s, when anti-environmentalist Interior Secretary James Watt actively sought to degrade the nation’s precious natural resources, and California, led by Gov. George Deukmejian, found it more convenient to simply ignore water quality issues.

Today, the easier-to-solve water quality problems, like upgrading coastal sewage treatment plants, have largely been addressed. Now we face the more complex remaining issues of polluted runoff. The state seems content to exert its leadership on water quality and coastal protection issues solely through spending voter-approved bond money on habitat preservation and structural measures to improve water quality.

Meanwhile, many of the cities and counties charged with improving water quality are crippled by fears of litigation, liability and increased costs as developers, sewage agencies, industry and even other cities have grown skilled in their use of the legal system to fend off unwanted change.

Take the case of Malibu. The California Coastal Commission requires that every coastal city have a local coastal plan that lays out policies and requirements for managing fragile resources. In most of California, the plans have been expeditiously produced. But in the current environment, the Malibu plan has become a battleground.

Residents insist the Coastal Commission is violating their property rights. Bitter fights have erupted over access to beaches and protection of sensitive habitats. Residents claim the proposed regulations are so tight that they would prohibit homeowners from planting rose bushes on their properties. And environmentalists accuse beachfront homeowners of trying to preserve the coast for the exclusive use of the rich.

The fights grew so contentious that the city refused to implement the plan at all, and now five developers and the city of Malibu are suing the Coastal Commission over the matter. The backlash has some Malibu residents, developers and their supporters vowing to try to oust Coastal Commission Chairwoman Sara Wan, the most knowledgeable, pro-environment commissioner the agency has ever had.

In Los Angeles and Ventura counties, the situation has gotten so bad that nearly every permit and regulation proposed by the Los Angeles regional water board is now appealed to the state water board in Sacramento or challenged in court. Discharge permits for numerous sewage-treatment plants, a municipal storm water permit for Los Angeles County and new trash limits for the Los Angeles River and Ballona Creek have all been held up by appeals.

Meanwhile, the state seems to be working at cross-purposes with itself. Even as the state water board spends hundreds of millions of dollars in bond funds aimed at improving water quality, it is also implementing regulations that severely weaken the EPA’s National Toxics Rule water quality standards for fresh water, bays and estuaries.

The state has also proposed removing some of California’s most polluted waters from the priority list for cleanup. In addition, the state water board has issued statewide draft regulations on septic systems and industrial sources of storm water that do little more than maintain the status quo, which means that far too many waters will remain polluted by fecal bacteria, nitrates and toxic heavy metals and hydrocarbons.

In Los Angeles County, where two-thirds of the voters approved the most recent water quality bond measure, nearly 40 small cities have banded together with the Building Industry Assn. to form the Coalition for Practical Regulation. Using public funds, the group has developed a slick marketing campaign and retained high-priced attorneys to oppose all new storm water quality regulations. Tens of thousands of mailers have gone out to the public with Chicken Little-like threats of imminent financial harm and loss of libraries, police and firefighters if water quality regulations are promulgated.

Ten years from now, long after the $8 billion in clean-water bonds passed in recent years has been spent, the public will judge the success of these bond measures in a simple way. Are our beaches safer for swimmers and surfers? Is our tap water safer? And are our precious coastal and watershed resources better protected?

Capital projects to improve water quality, and spending bond funds to purchase some of the few remaining coastal watershed natural resources, will certainly lead to progress in these areas. But unless the state, the EPA, the business community, local governments and the environmental community can come together to develop and act on solutions to California’s crises regarding clean water and coastal resource protection, then the state will have lost a tremendous opportunity to deliver on the promise of waters that are safe and healthy for people and aquatic life.