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Conan Martinez

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When rain comes to Los Angeles, a certain kind of relief sets in. The land springs to life. The dust and grit and oil slick, accumulated over a summer of dry weather, gets washed away down storm drains. Everything gleams anew.

But this relief comes at a heavy cost. The stormwater that streams down our streets and into our creeks and rivers is heavily polluted. Oil, gasoline, industrial runoff, heavy metals and many tons of trash are carried by the rain, untreated, straight to our waterways and ocean. This pollution destroys ecosystems, kills wildlife and dirties our beaches. Not to mention that billions of gallons of much-needed fresh water drain out to sea.

In a few weeks the voters of Los Angeles County will have the opportunity to address this problem by supporting Measure W, also known as the Safe Clean Water Program. It's a parcel tax that, if passed, would begin to fund thousands of backlogged stormwater infrastructure projects that the county has had in the works for decades.

There are significant environmental, social and legal reasons for supporting Measure W. It also happens to be good for business.

Measure W is a parcel tax that, if passed, would begin to fund thousands of backlogged stormwater infrastructure projects.

L.A. County and the surrounding region has for decades been required to comply with the Clean Water Act, which makes it illegal to allow stormwater pollution to flow into the ocean and other waterways. For decades, the county and its 88 cities have largely ignored the law's mandates, perhaps in hopes that the costs of compliance could be deferred.

As soon as 2020, L.A. County and its municipalities will face millions, if not billions, in fines for violating the Clean Water Act. These fines will be passed on to tax payers and businesses.

Measure W provides funding to help the county come into compliance.

Yes, it creates a new tax. But it's far more sensible to pay this nominal tax now than it would be to send our money to regulators later. Moreover, the tax will pay for something we have to do anyway: clean our stormwater.

Thousands of businesses in L.A. County have already invested in stormwater treatment technologies to meet their obligations under the Clean Water Act, and their investments will be credited against the new tax. But three to four times as many businesses have done nothing, instead rolling the dice that non-enforcement will continue.

Measure W credits businesses that have made the right investments while finally bringing enforcement and fairness to a system that for too long has favored those who violate it.

Although the measure is concerned primarily with the control of stormwater pollution, many of the projects it would fund have the added benefits of improving stormwater capture and groundwater recharge. This would increase L.A. County's sources of local water significantly, which in turn would reduce our pumping needs, thus lowering our electricity demands. The billions of gallons of rain that fall in L.A. County every year are one of our best untapped resources.

Opponents of the measure have three main concerns, but each one is unwarranted. They say the funding it would provide is a blank check to the government without independent oversight. In fact, the measure calls for independent oversight of both the funding and all projects it would support - oversight that would be carried out at the local level by municipal, scientific, environmental and business leaders.

They also say the measure lacks a sunset provision. But the parcel tax would not escalate over time. A few decades from now, the funding will dwindle to support merely the ongoing operations and maintenance of the stormwater projects.

Finally, critics complain that the measure doesn't list the projects that would receive funding. But the county and each of the cities that would be affected have listed their priority stormwater projects publicly for decades.

Every time we pollute the ocean or our groundwater, we take out a loan that will be paid for by our children - not only with greater clean-up costs but greater health risks. For too many years, we have hoped against all evidence to the contrary that water scarcity, pollution and environmental decay will go away on its own. L.A. voters can turn this around by voting to support Measure W.

Peter Brooks is the vice president of a water technology firm in Los Angeles. He is a Fulbright Scholar and former director of the Harvard Water Federalism Initiative. William W. Funderburk, Jr. is the co-founder of Castellón & Funderburk, where he practices environmental and energy law. He served as vice president of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Board of Commissioners from 2013 to 2018.

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L.A.'s stormwater is so filthy it's illegal. Measure W would clean it up

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When rain comes to Los Angeles, a certain kind of relief sets in. The land springs to life. The dust and grit and oil slick, accumulated over a summer of dry weather, gets washed away down storm drains. Everything gleams anew. But this relief comes at a heavy cost.

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San Diego's biggest infrastructure need is storm drains

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San Diego's biggest infrastructure need is storm drains

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Margaret Egler

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Underneath San Diego streets lies a network of pipes and tunnels that most people never see. But when it rains, that network is busy carrying water out from neighborhoods and into the city's rivers, bays and beaches.

Much of that network is on the verge of collapse, and the city has nowhere near enough money to fix it.

A report from the City Auditor's Office released this month notes a staggering $459 million funding shortfall for stormwater infrastructure. The unfunded needs for stormwater are greater than any other type of infrastructure in the city, including streets, streetlights, sidewalks, bridges, parks or fire stations.

"(The audit) recognized that this city had done very little in the last 20 years, both to educate the public about the lack of funding for stormwater infrastructure and to actually do something about it," said Matt O'Malley, chief executive of the nonprofit San Diego Coastkeeper, which advocates for clean water.

The consequences of the city failing to fund its stormwater needs are serious: Stormwater pipe failures have caused flooding, sinkholes and property damage, sometimes resulting in lawsuits. Their emergency repairs are costly.
RELATED: County Web Application Ranks Beach Water Quality
Also at stake is San Diego's compliance with clean water regulations. On the journey through streets, pipes and channels, stormwater picks up a host of bacteria and other pollutants. That dirty water ultimately ends up in the city's waterways, and can sometimes cause human illness. Excessive pollution can result in fines, ultimately shouldered by the taxpayer.

"There's many people who get sick just from swimming in our beaches," O'Malley said. "It's sort of a big hidden secret in San Diego that our waterways are not nearly as clean as they should be."

The audit, which was heard by the City Council's Audit Committee on Wednesday, does acknowledge some efficiencies and cost savings city staffers have undertaken. The Storm Water Division's in-house pipe repair crew has managed to extend the life of some failing stormwater pipes by installing pipelining, and by proactively repairing some pipes.

"We're very pleased with the audit and its findings, largely because the findings are just a continuation of a lot of strategies and program improvements that we've already put in place," said Drew Kleis, deputy director of the city's Storm Water Division.

Kleis also said San Diego has a much clearer picture of its stormwater needs than most other cities. San Diego's Watershed Asset Management Plan helps guide which locations are in most urgent need of repair or replacement. The federal Environmental Protection Agency used the plan as a case study for how other cities could assess their own stormwater infrastructure needs.

But despite all the city's efforts, the audit finds city leaders have consistently been warned of the lack of funding for stormwater infrastructure, but have failed to come up with a long-term funding strategy.
RELATED: Increased Homeless Population Along San Diego River Hampers Water Quality
In their response to the audit, city officials agreed to complete a long-term funding plan for stormwater - but they gave themselves a deadline of January 2021. That is much too late for a potential ballot measure that would give voters the option of raising fees or taxes to help close the funding gap.

Kleis said the deadline was set for after the city finishes negotiations with the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board on its latest set of standards for reaching compliance with clean water rules. He said the city is hoping it can negotiate rules that will lower the cost of compliance.

"I think the most important point is that the picture of what our funding needs will be is likely to evolve, and it will change," Kleis said. "And hopefully downward, in a downward direction."

O'Malley said the city has waited long enough for a sustainable funding strategy for stormwater infrastructure. Still, he blames elected officials - not city staffers - for failing to come up with a solution.

"Stormwater is a hidden infrastructure project, it's not very sexy," O'Malley said. "No one has really stepped up to be the champion for stormwater and for clean water in our region."

The shortfall in funding for stormwater infrastructure in San Diego is worse than it is for streets, bridges, sidewalks or fire stations. The existing network of underground pipes is failing - and the city has nowhere near enough money to fix it.

To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader.

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San Diego's Biggest Infrastructure Need Isn't Streets - It's Storm Drains

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The shortfall in funding for stormwater infrastructure in San Diego is worse than it is for streets, bridges, sidewalks or fire stations. The existing network of underground pipes is failing - and the city has nowhere near enough money to fix it.

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Irwin Leung

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San Diego has dense communities with roads, sidewalks, housing, shopping, industry and vehicles, which contribute to the number one water quality problem in San Diego: urban runoff.

Urban runoff is water that flows over man-made surfaces in densely populated areas and drains directly into our waters. Stormwater, irrigation and other water carry pollutants such as oil, grease, pesticides, metals, bacteria and viruses and toxic chemicals.

And then washes it all into our rivers, bays, lakes and ocean.

In Southern California, storm drain systems carry millions of gallons of polluted runoff to the ocean every day. In San Diego, our storm drain systems empty directly into our rivers, creeks, bays and beaches without any treatment.

We safeguard our vulnerable waters by ensuring improved and collaborative stormwater permits that regulate runoff. We also keep a keen eye on San Diego's sewage spills, which once occurred daily in the City of San Diego, to make sure this avoidable pollution doesn't destroy water quality. Whether it's Camp Pendleton, the City of San Diego or the Point Loma Sewage Treatment plant, we fight for solutions to keep the county's waters clean.

Surf our website to learn about these water pollution problems in San Diego County and how San Diego Coastkeeper protects and restores fishable, swimmable and drinkable waters so that you can safely enjoy your real-life surf sesh.

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San Diego Water Pollution - San Diego Coastkeeper

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San Diego has dense communities with roads, sidewalks, housing, shopping, industry and vehicles, which contribute to the number one water quality problem in San Diego: urban runoff. Urban runoff is water that flows over man-made surfaces in densely populated areas and drains directly into our waters.

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Molly Blume

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What's the Big Deal?

Urban runoff is the single biggest threat to water quality in San Diego.

As we created cities and more people settled in our region, we paved over the "spongy" parts of watersheds. This means surfaces that previously allowed water to infiltrate became hard. This stops water from soaking into the ground or being used by plants. These impervious surfaces, like parking lots, roads and buildings, cause water to flow over the surface of a watershed. This surface flow, also known as stormwater or urban runoff, causes problems in our creeks, rivers and lagoons including increased pollution, faster and flashier flows and increased erosion.

Essentially, our human activities have disrupted how watersheds function.

During our long dry season, pollutants build on hard surfaces. When it rains, stormwater pushes the accumulated pollutants into our storm drains. In San Diego, like most of California, our storm drains generally do not connect to wastewater treatment plants, so everything flows untreated into our waters.

It does not take much pavement in a watershed to cause ecological harm- water quality and habitat impacts can start when as little as 10 percent of the watershed gets paved. This makes protecting and restoring water quality very challenging.

In addition to pollution from our cars, yards, and streets, contaminants flow into our storm drain system from industrial and construction areas, irrigation, the atmosphere and sewage spills. When not managed appropriately, industrial and construction sites can be significant sources of pollution.

Infrequent rain in San Diego allows pollutants to build on land, which leads to a dangerous "first flush" of pollutants into our waterways during the first rain after a long dry spell. But even during dry weather, we send pollutants from the land into the water. Every time a lawn is over watered into the streets or a carwash flows into the storm drain, pollutants move into our waters.

Urban runoff creates negative impacts such as:

Where does it come from?

Urban runoff is a result of pollution from the following areas:

Infrequent rain in San Diego allows pollutants to build on the land, which leads to a dangerous "first flush" of pollutants into our waters during the first rain after a long dry spell. But even during dry weather, we send pollutants from the land into the water. Mostly we do this by over-irrigating our landscape, but sometimes groundwater seeps can also carry pollutants into our surface water during dry weather.

Practice and share these tips to reduce how you negatively contribute to runoff pollution.

Residential Sources

Our homes and neighborhoods are a significant source of polluted urban runoff. Every time you spread your lawn fertilizer a bit too far outside of your lawn, every dog poop left behind, every time ant or roach pesticide gets blown from its intended target, a little bit of pollution gets added to the system. Multiply this by the three million residents we have in the county, and it all adds up.

Commercial Sources

Businesses also have a role to play in helping prevent urban runoff. Our commercial areas often have large parking lots that increase the amount of surface flow into our storm drains. Businesses like fast food restaurants and bars seem to attract trash and cigarette butts. Dirty mop water water poured into the storm drain is a source of nastiness in our rivers.

Agricultural Sources

You may not think of San Diego County as an agricultural powerhouse, but we have a huge amount of agriculture. San Diego County is the 12th-largest farm economy and has more small farms (less than 10 acres) than any other county. Local agriculture brings $5.1 billion annually into our economy. Farms, however, often contribute to nutrient pollution to our waters. San Diego Coastkeeper's water monitoring lab has shown that nitrates (a common form of nitrogen fertilizer) is a ubiquitous pollutant in our streams. Poor irrigation runoff management could explain much of that nitrate in our waters.

Industrial Sources

In San Diego County, our industrial areas often concentrate into small sections of town. Auto repair shops, shipbuilding, recycling centers and other industrial areas have the potential to contribute metals and oils into our stormwater system. These pollutants are especially serious because of their ability to be toxic in very low concentrations. Because of the seriousness of these pollutants, all stormwater in an industrial facility should be captured and treated on site.

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Sources of Runoff Pollution - San Diego Coastkeeper

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Urban runoff is the single biggest threat to water quality in San Diego. As we created cities and more people settled in our region, we paved over the "spongy" parts of watersheds. This means surfaces that previously allowed water to infiltrate became hard. This stops water from soaking into the ground or being used by plants.

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Coast Keeper article on San Diego's water pollution city run off

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Coast Keeper article on San Diego's water pollution city run off

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Mia Aust

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San Diego has dense communities with roads, sidewalks, housing, shopping, industry and vehicles, which contribute to the number one water quality problem in San Diego: urban runoff.

Urban runoff is water that flows over man-made surfaces in densely populated areas and drains directly into our waters. Stormwater, irrigation and other water carry pollutants such as oil, grease, pesticides, metals, bacteria and viruses and toxic chemicals.

And then washes it all into our rivers, bays, lakes and ocean.

In Southern California, storm drain systems carry millions of gallons of polluted runoff to the ocean every day. In San Diego, our storm drain systems empty directly into our rivers, creeks, bays and beaches without any treatment.

We safeguard our vulnerable waters by ensuring improved and collaborative stormwater permits that regulate runoff. We also keep a keen eye on San Diego's sewage spills, which once occurred daily in the City of San Diego, to make sure this avoidable pollution doesn't destroy water quality. Whether it's Camp Pendleton, the City of San Diego or the Point Loma Sewage Treatment plant, we fight for solutions to keep the county's waters clean.

Surf our website to learn about these water pollution problems in San Diego County and how San Diego Coastkeeper protects and restores fishable, swimmable and drinkable waters so that you can safely enjoy your real-life surf sesh.

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San Diego Water Pollution - San Diego Coastkeeper

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San Diego has dense communities with roads, sidewalks, housing, shopping, industry and vehicles, which contribute to the number one water quality problem in San Diego: urban runoff. Urban runoff is water that flows over man-made surfaces in densely populated areas and drains directly into our waters.

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City of San Diego Storm Drain Maintenance

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City of San Diego Storm Drain Maintenance

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Andrew Ferguson

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Drains

The City of San Diego has over 75,000 storm drain structures and 889 miles of drainage pipe. The Storm Water Department is responsible for inspection, maintenance and repair of the storm drain system in the public right-of-way and in drainage easements. This includes clearing blocked drains, removing debris from storm drain structures, and cleaning and repairing damaged drainpipes.

Storm drains are designed to handle normal water flow, but occasionally during heavy rain, flooding will occur. Our goal is to limit the number of flooding incidents by keeping the drains clear with regular maintenance and cleaning.

Click the link below to see an example of one neighborhood and its storm drain system. The City's storm water responsibilities extend from the international border to the San Pasquale Valley.

Fences

The Storm Water Department maintains over 100 miles of fencing. The fencing serves a variety of purposes. Most of the fencing surrounds storm drain channels and drainage structures. This serves the dual purpose of providing public safety and keeping excess debris out of the channels. Fences are checked at the start of the rainy season, as well as during and after the rains. Street Division also maintains fences in storm drain channels which function as a strainer to keep debris from flowing down the channel. They are inspected and cleaned regularly during the rainy season. We also maintain fences along roadways. These fences are installed for the purpose of public safety and are designed to keep pedestrians from crossing at hazardous locations.

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Drains The City of San Diego has over 75,000 storm drain structures and 889 miles of drainage pipe. The Storm Water Department is responsible for inspection, maintenance and repair of the storm drain system in the public right-of-way and in drainage easements.

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Sources of Stormwater Pollution and a Proposed Using Green Infrastructure to Prevent It

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Sources of Stormwater Pollution and a Proposed Using Green Infrastructure to Prevent It

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Nate Corbett

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In undeveloped areas, precipitation typically soaks into the ground. When buildings, parking lots, roads and other hard surfaces are added to the landscape, the ground cannot absorb the water. Water from rain or snow storms, known as stormwater, instead flows over streets, parking lots and roofs and into a water body or storm drain.

Stormwater runoff is often worsened by human activities, and can contain nitrogen and phosphorus pollutants from fertilizers, pet and yard waste. Because stormwater flows over hard surfaces directly into a water body or storm drain, there is no opportunity for soil and plants or a water treatment facility to filter out pollutants. Urban and suburban areas produce much more stormwater runoff due to the high amount of paved and hard surfaces.

During periods of heavy rainfall or snowmelt, some wastewater systems are designed to occasionally overflow and discharge excess untreated sewage directly to nearby streams, rivers or other water bodies. These discharges are known as combined sewer overflows and are common in many cities nationwide.

Green infrastructure can be used to address stormwater runoff and sewer overflow problems. Green infrastructure works by slowing down the runoff, spreading it out over the land, and slowly soaking it into the ground, or in some cases reusing the water onsite. Green infrastructure is also sometimes referred to as low impact development. These techniques also help to remove pollutants from runoff, buy allowing plants to filter out pollutants as the water slowly infiltrates into the ground. Some examples of green infrastructure techniques include rain gardens, pervious pavement, rain barrels, and green roofs.

Learn more about what you can do to reduce stormwater runoff in your yard.

A Drop's Life

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information management > web site & services

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pollutants & contaminants > biological contaminants > algae

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Sources and Solutions: Stormwater | US EPA

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In undeveloped areas, precipitation typically soaks into the ground. When buildings, parking lots, roads and other hard surfaces are added to the landscape, the ground cannot absorb the water. Water from rain or snow storms, known as stormwater, instead flows over streets, parking lots and roofs and into a water body or storm drain.

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San Diego Facing $4.6m for allegedly allowing private construction sites to pollute sensitive waterways

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San Diego Facing $4.6m for allegedly allowing private construction sites to pollute sensitive waterways

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Deja Taylor

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Local water quality officials proposed on Tuesday fining San Diego $4.6 million for allegedly allowing private construction sites to pollute sensitive waterways, including the Los Peñasquitos Lagoon.

Over a period of nearly five years, city officials failed to conduct proper site inspections, prevent harmful sediment erosion and enforce the city's water quality ordinances at multiple sites, according to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Erosion from construction sites can send sediment downstream to creeks and lagoons, where it can transport toxic pollutants, clog natural drainage systems and smother habitat, according to a six-page complaint issued by the board.

A city spokesman said officials were reviewing the complaint on Tuesday and examining ways to address the board's concerns in a manner that would provide greater environmental benefits to communities in San Diego.

The city could pay the penalty, contest it or propose a settlement that may include a supplemental environmental project. The board has scheduled a hearing for Oct. 12.

The complaint blames the violations partly on poorly trained city inspectors, and calls the violations surprising because the regulations have been in place for more than 20 years.

"The water board expects the city's commitment to water quality ordinances to be embraced more broadly by all city staff - not just the planners who wrote them," said James Smith, the board's assistant executive officer and leader of the prosecution team.

The complaint says the maximum fine for the violations, which also affected the Tijuana River Estuary in the South Bay, would have been $22.7 million. The $4.6 million proposed was described as the city's "minimum liability."

The alleged violations took place between October 2010 and May 2015.

The complaint says San Diego inspectors were either unable or unwilling to take the enforcement actions against construction sites that are spelled out in city ordinances.

It says city officials and the water board jointly crafted plans to address sediment problems affecting salt marsh habitat in the Los Penasquitos Lagoon, noting that the partnership prompted the board to take a flexible approach.

"The San Diego water board put a lot of resources into collaborative, outcome-focused efforts to protect and restore areas like Los Peñasquitos Lagoon and Tijuana River Estuary," Smith said. "Enforcement like this is the result of a major deviation from the expectations we had for those partnerships."

The complaint says an investigation by the board found city officials were allowing construction sites within the lagoon's watershed to skirt erosion control requirements, leading to multiple instances of sediment pollution that could have easily been prevented.

San Diego Coastkeeper, a nonprofit group focused on local water quality, said it was disappointing to see such violations.

"It's unfortunate that we still have municipalities failing to implement even the minimum measures necessary to achieve clean water when we know that stormwater pollution is one of the biggest threats to our water quality," said Matt O'Malley, Coastkeeper's legal and policy director.

O'Malley praised the board for its vigilance.

"We are pleased to see the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board working so diligently to protect the waters of San Diego," he said.

The proposed fine is based on a formula of $10,000 per day, plus $10 for every gallon of pollutant discharge above 1,000 that does not get cleaned up. The formula also adds on 10 percent as a punitive deterrent.

Fine money goes into a statewide account for clean-up and abatement projects, but up to half could be set aside for local projects if the city and the board reach a settlement, a board spokeswoman said.

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San Diego facing $4.6M water pollution fine

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Local water quality officials proposed on Tuesday fining San Diego $4.6 million for allegedly allowing private construction sites to pollute sensitive waterways, including the Los Peñasquitos Lagoon. Over a period of nearly five years, city officials failed to conduct proper site inspections, prevent harmful sediment erosion and enforce the city's water quality ordinances at multiple sites, according to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.

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karla
- talks about what makes this problem worse and talks about some solutions like.
-." A stormwater utility would charge property owners fees based on how much stormwater their property contributes to municipal stormwater systems."

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Stormwater runoff is the single largest contributor of non-point source pollution to Michigan's waterways. While separating our sanitary sewers from storm sewers will do a great deal to protect our water from raw or partially treated sewage overflows, we have to pursue other policy options to deal with stormwater where it lands. Stormwater runs off of our driveways, lawns, parking lots, roofs, and other gray infrastructure. In most cases, this water then drains into combined pipes where it mixes with sewage before heading to a wastewater treatment plant. In some cities, like Grand Rapids, these stormwater and wastewater pipes have been separated. This separation eliminates combined sewage overflows. In both cases, the stormwater is carrying with it oils, anti-freeze, fertilizers, dog feces, and myriad other dangerous chemicals it comes in contact with. In both instances, when the system is working properly and not exceeding its capacity, the water goes first to wastewater treatment plants before then being discharged back into the water table.

During heavy rainfall events however, our sewers often exceed their intended flow capacity, and untreated stormwater, carrying all the same dangerous pollutants, gets deposited directly into lakes, rivers, and streams. The fertilizers carried by stormwater from suburban lawns is a huge problem. These fertilizers and nitrates contribute to the toxic algae blooms that pollute Lake Erie as well as many inland lakes in Michigan.

This problem is only getting worse as urban, suburban, and exurban areas continue to expand in population and square mileage. Many of these gray infrastructure systems are not being upgraded at the same rate, and end up allowing for overflows and discharges that are harmful to our local rivers and streams. Climate change contributes to the problem too as Michigan continues to see more frequent and more extreme weather events.

There is a simple way to solve this problem. The best way to treat stormwater is to treat it where it falls, as it falls. When green infrastructure is put in place, stormwater re-enters the water table without picking up harmful chemicals from nonporous surfaces. Native plants helps to act as a sponge, soaking up water where it falls. The water is then filtered naturally through roots and soil before then making its way back into aquifers. This is why raingardens, wetlands, bio-swales, porous pavement, and other green infrastructure upgrades go a long way toward solving this major water quality issue.

Most lawns, especially the popular and widely used Kentucky bluegrass, are invasive to Michigan (meaning it isn't native to our state). Unlike native plants which tend to have deeper roots and allow for much greater water infiltration during rainfall, Kentucky bluegrass and most other lawn species have shallow root structures that don't allow for much infiltration, meaning that rain does not infiltrate the ground well enough and ultimately runs off the lawn into sewers, carrying with it fertilizer and all the other pollutants it comes in contact with on the way.

Individual households can make a big difference by adding green infrastructure to their property. Some green infrastructure upgrades include things like: raingardens, rain barrels, and buffer strips. By utilizing native Michigan grasses and plants in your yard, you are helping to capture rain where it falls and keep it from polluting our local waterways. By capturing stormwater in rain barrels on your property, you save water (and money) as this water is easily reused to maintain your flowerbeds and vegetable gardens. For more information on easy green infrastructure upgrades you can make at home, check out this resource from EPA.

One way to implement green infrastructure on a larger scale is by allowing for municipalities to create stormwater utilities. A stormwater utility would charge property owners fees based on how much stormwater their property contributes to municipal stormwater systems. These fees would then be used by the municipal utility to make upgrades, invest in infrastructure and maintain existing systems. Those fees could be reduced or eliminated when a property owner installs green infrastructure that reduces or eliminates runoff from their property. This does two really positive things. First, it gives municipalities the funding necessary to deal with our expanding stormwater problem. Second, it creates incentive for property owners to be proactive in installing green infrastructure and eliminating runoff from their own properties.

To find out more about our work on stormwater issues, or to volunteer with us, click here.

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Stormwater runoff is the single largest contributor of non-point source pollution to Michigan's waterways. While separating our sanitary sewers from storm sewers will do a great deal to protect our water from raw or partially treated sewage overflows, we have to pursue other policy options to deal with stormwater where it lands.

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Talks about how this problem is happening in Australia and what they are doing to fix it.
Kristina Cotta

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Stormwater is the water draining off a site from the rain that falls on the roof and land, and everything it carries with it. The soil, organic matter, litter, fertilisers from gardens and oil residues from driveways it carries can pollute downstream waterways.

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San Diego to remove trash from water pathways to ocean

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San Diego to remove trash from water pathways to ocean

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Irwin Leung

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Water-quality advocates are applauding a statewide policy announced Tuesday (April 7) that aims to entirely eliminate trash from the state's water systems and coast over the next ten years.

Municipalities have two routes to select in implementing the plan, with the preferred option being to "install, operate, and maintain full [trash] capture systems in storm drains" in industrial, commercial, and high-density residential areas.

Under the regulation, cities would also be able to deploy a combination of solutions, including the storm-drain filters, increased street sweeping, consumer education programs, or the enactment of local laws targeting litter sources. Going this route would require the production of monitoring reports to prove a net effect equal to the storm-drain trash-capture system.

"San Diego is currently the largest coastal city in the state without specific trash removal requirements in place," said Matt O'Malley with San Diego Coastkeeper in a release, noting that San Francisco and Los Angeles, whose trash-capture system the new rules are based on, have already begun to address their trash problems.

Last year Coastkeeper, in conjunction with the local Surfrider Foundation chapter, organized beach cleanups that resulted in the recovery of over 200,000 pieces of trash. That equates to just 10,500 pounds of garbage collected, as compared to annual trash reduction of up to a million pounds in Los Angeles using the storm-water collection solution.

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Water-quality advocates are applauding a statewide policy announced Tuesday (April 7) that aims to entirely eliminate trash from the state's water systems and coast over the next ten years. Municipalities have two routes to select in implementing the plan, with the preferred option being to "install, operate, and maintain full [trash] capture systems in storm drains" in industrial, commercial, and high-density residential areas.

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New Proposal for Storm Drains due to new climate

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New Proposal for Storm Drains due to new climate

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Irwin Leung

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Rainwater + hard urban surfaces = lots of runoff. KOMUnews, CC BY

This article is part of The Conversation's series on drought. You can read the rest of the series here.
More than half the world's population lives in metropolitan centers. The built environment of a city is very different from that of rural and natural areas. When it rains over a rural landscape, much of the rainwater sinks into the ground or is evaporated or transpirated by trees, crops and other plants.

Transpiration is the biological process in which plants pull moisture out of the soil by their roots and release water vapor to the atmosphere through small openings in their leaves. Every day, plants release large quantities of water vapor. Growing plants can transpire up to 10 times as much water as they hold in their stems and leaves. These slow, natural processes allow precipitation to replenish groundwater and sustain vegetation, leaving only a small amount of water as overland flow or runoff.

US EPA

In urban areas, though, when it rains, it pours! City streets, rooftops and parking lots make for hard surfaces that convert huge amounts of rainwater directly into runoff. In a typical city block, stormwater is collected by drains and catchbasins which then convey it underground through sewers. Finally, it's discharged to a natural water system such as a creek, river or lake. Often stormwater is released without any pollution management. That's a problem, since as water runs over urban surfaces, it picks up bacteria, heavy metals, nutrients and particulates.

In cities, the source of water that replenishes our aquifers is completely altered. Under natural conditions, aquifers are sustained through the infiltration of clean rainwater and streamwater into the ground. But for urban environments, these sources are cut off by the impervious landscapes. Instead, water from leaky sewers, water mains, septic tanks and landscape irrigation becomes the source for groundwater recharge. Since many of these sources are wastewater, they're poor-quality sources and can lead to groundwater contamination.

Recent innovations in how to deal with urban stormwater are working to prevent runoff near its source and to provide pollution prevention and quantity control.

Imitating nature to solve an urban problem

Low Impact Development (LID) is a planning and design approach that aims to mimic naturalized water balances. It combines infiltration, evaporation and transpiration while limiting runoff. The goal of LID is to restore processes that are lost in a built-up urban environment. LID includes several types of low-level new and innovative stormwater technologies that together let water infiltrate the ground and evapotranspire into the air.

Green or living infrastructure features heavily in the LID approach. Green roofs are vegetated roof systems that combine plants, engineered growing media, drainage layers and traditional waterproof roof membranes. They can look like rooftop gardens. Bioretention and rain gardens are other vegetated systems, these on ground level, that allow stormwater to soak directly into the earth. These living systems restore evapotranspiration and clean stormwater by filtering it as it flows through the engineered soils.

Permeable pavements allow stormwater to infiltrate slowly into the ground. These pavements can be used for low traffic roadways and driveways, parking lots and pedestrian walkways. There are many different kinds of permeable pavements: Some of the most commercially successful systems include permeable interlocking pavers, grass pavers, pervious concrete and porous asphalt.

Increasingly, municipal and regional legislators are introducing LID and green infrastructure into new public policy. In 2009 Toronto implemented a green roof bylaw requiring green roof construction on new and redevelopment projects. New York City's green infrastructure program aims to reduce the frequency with which the city's sewer system releases combined stormwater and sewage into downstream waterways. And, in water-limited cities, such as Canberra, Australia, neighborhood-level LID systems are harvesting and recycling stormwater.

Treatment all along the line

In North America, urban communities built before 1980 often were not designed with any neighborhood stormwater management. Since 1980, the traditional approach to stormwater management has been an end-of-pipe system. End-of-pipe systems use centralized infrastructure located at the end of a sewer line to provide flood control and pollution management. In North America, the most popular end-of-pipe approach has been stormwater management ponds that provide temporary storage for stormwater and improve water quality through sedimentation. When these systems fail or are overloaded, residents experience flooding, and polluted stormwater is released downstream.

Conveyance and end-of-pipe infrastructure are also being reimagined to create a complete treatment train; urban stormwater is managed and treated at all points along its path through the urban environment, rather than only at the end of the line. Sewer pipes can be designed to be leaky to support groundwater recharge. Infiltration chambers use buried pipes or cells to hold back stormwater and slowly release it into the ground to support infiltration. Constructed wetlands clean stormwater and remove nutrients like nitrogen.

Changing climate demands new stormwater infrastructure

Decentralizing stormwater infrastructure creates the opportunity to build resilience and redundancy into urban planning and design, helping communities better prepare for extreme weather events, such as droughts or deluges. Integrating stormwater management throughout a neighborhood - through the use of green roofs, rainwater harvesting, infiltration systems and so on - in combination with traditional conveyance and end-of-pipe infrastructure, allows communities to simultaneously manage stormwater for both everyday and extreme events.

Urban communities must be designed to live in balance with the local climate and environment, whether quite wet or very dry. To achieve this, developers and city planners need to recognize that some places are not appropriate for human development. For example, the Alberta Floodway Relocation Program, created in response to the extensive destruction caused by Alberta's 2013 Great Flood, is providing financial support to relocate residents whose homes are within river floodplains or flood fringes.

Cities must implement stormwater practices that are climate-appropriate. In the southwestern US, this is occurring through the proliferation of rainwater-harvesting and water-recycling infrastructure. San Diego's pure water program is aiming to produce one-third of the city's drinking water supply locally through water recycling by 2035. Space-limited cities such as Chicago and Toronto are experiencing green roof construction booms, which has reduced runoff. In coastal regions, we see an increase in natural infrastructure including wetlands and sand dunes.

Low Impact Development is about customizing technology to address the unique needs of a city. A well-planned community combines small, medium and large infrastructure. By sustaining naturalized water processes within urban environments, we can reduce the impact of the built environment on our water resources. Ultimately, LID combined with green infrastructure will protect citizens during extreme weather events and support healthy urban rivers and lakes.

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Stormwater innovations mean cities don't just flush rainwater down the drain

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This article is part of The Conversation's series on drought. You can read the rest of the series here. More than half the world's population lives in metropolitan centers. The built environment of a city is very different from that of rural and natural areas.

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Industrial area poor management
Cars, Yards, and Streets
Adrian

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What's the Big Deal?

Urban runoff is the single biggest threat to water quality in San Diego.

As we created cities and more people settled in our region, we paved over the "spongy" parts of watersheds. This means surfaces that previously allowed water to infiltrate became hard. This stops water from soaking into the ground or being used by plants. These impervious surfaces, like parking lots, roads and buildings, cause water to flow over the surface of a watershed. This surface flow, also known as stormwater or urban runoff, causes problems in our creeks, rivers and lagoons including increased pollution, faster and flashier flows and increased erosion.

Essentially, our human activities have disrupted how watersheds function.

During our long dry season, pollutants build on hard surfaces. When it rains, stormwater pushes the accumulated pollutants into our storm drains. In San Diego, like most of California, our storm drains generally do not connect to wastewater treatment plants, so everything flows untreated into our waters.

It does not take much pavement in a watershed to cause ecological harm- water quality and habitat impacts can start when as little as 10 percent of the watershed gets paved. This makes protecting and restoring water quality very challenging.

In addition to pollution from our cars, yards, and streets, contaminants flow into our storm drain system from industrial and construction areas, irrigation, the atmosphere and sewage spills. When not managed appropriately, industrial and construction sites can be significant sources of pollution.

Infrequent rain in San Diego allows pollutants to build on land, which leads to a dangerous "first flush" of pollutants into our waterways during the first rain after a long dry spell. But even during dry weather, we send pollutants from the land into the water. Every time a lawn is over watered into the streets or a carwash flows into the storm drain, pollutants move into our waters.

Urban runoff creates negative impacts such as:

Where does it come from?

Urban runoff is a result of pollution from the following areas:

Infrequent rain in San Diego allows pollutants to build on the land, which leads to a dangerous "first flush" of pollutants into our waters during the first rain after a long dry spell. But even during dry weather, we send pollutants from the land into the water. Mostly we do this by over-irrigating our landscape, but sometimes groundwater seeps can also carry pollutants into our surface water during dry weather.

Practice and share these tips to reduce how you negatively contribute to runoff pollution.

Residential Sources

Our homes and neighborhoods are a significant source of polluted urban runoff. Every time you spread your lawn fertilizer a bit too far outside of your lawn, every dog poop left behind, every time ant or roach pesticide gets blown from its intended target, a little bit of pollution gets added to the system. Multiply this by the three million residents we have in the county, and it all adds up.

Commercial Sources

Businesses also have a role to play in helping prevent urban runoff. Our commercial areas often have large parking lots that increase the amount of surface flow into our storm drains. Businesses like fast food restaurants and bars seem to attract trash and cigarette butts. Dirty mop water water poured into the storm drain is a source of nastiness in our rivers.

Agricultural Sources

You may not think of San Diego County as an agricultural powerhouse, but we have a huge amount of agriculture. San Diego County is the 12th-largest farm economy and has more small farms (less than 10 acres) than any other county. Local agriculture brings $5.1 billion annually into our economy. Farms, however, often contribute to nutrient pollution to our waters. San Diego Coastkeeper's water monitoring lab has shown that nitrates (a common form of nitrogen fertilizer) is a ubiquitous pollutant in our streams. Poor irrigation runoff management could explain much of that nitrate in our waters.

Industrial Sources

In San Diego County, our industrial areas often concentrate into small sections of town. Auto repair shops, shipbuilding, recycling centers and other industrial areas have the potential to contribute metals and oils into our stormwater system. These pollutants are especially serious because of their ability to be toxic in very low concentrations. Because of the seriousness of these pollutants, all stormwater in an industrial facility should be captured and treated on site.

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Sources of Runoff Pollution - San Diego Coastkeeper

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Urban runoff is the single biggest threat to water quality in San Diego. As we created cities and more people settled in our region, we paved over the "spongy" parts of watersheds. This means surfaces that previously allowed water to infiltrate became hard. This stops water from soaking into the ground or being used by plants.

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Samantha

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Share This Article:

The city of San Diego offers money-saving ways for water customers to conserve water. The city's Public Utilities Department provides rebates through grant funding by the Department of Water Resources for removing lawns and installing rain barrels.

Homeowners can apply now for financial rebates to convert their lawns into a drought resistant landscape. The city is offering a $1.25 per square foot rebate for all lawns that are converted. Converted areas must be designed to capture rainfall for reuse.

Applications are now being taken for Rainwater Harvesting Rebates. Rain barrels and downspouts catch rainwater from hard surfaces such as rooftops. While San Diego isn't in the rainy season yet, now is a good time to prepare. The barrels are a great way to conserve and then reuse the water for irrigation purposes. It also helps prevent pollution by reducing the amount of runoff that goes down the storm drain. Customers may receive $1 per gallon of barrel storage capacity for residential rainwater harvesting up to 400 gallons or $400 per property.

More information about these and other rebates, as well as additional water conservation options is available on the city's website at www.wastenowater.org.

Additional funding may also be available for customers through the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the San Diego County Water Authority. For more information, including how to submit your application and reserve funds, go to www.bewaterwise.com

San Diego Offers Landscape, Rain Barrel Rebates for Water Customers was last modified: by
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San Diego Offers Landscape, Rain Barrel Rebates for Water Customers - Times of San Diego

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Share This Article:The city of San Diego offers money-saving ways for water customers to conserve water. The city's Public Utilities Department provides rebates through grant funding by the Department of Water Resources for removing lawns and installing rain barrels.Support Times of San Diego's growthwith a small monthly contribution Become a supporter Homeowners can apply now ...

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This talks about the problems of rain run off.
Carlos

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We need your help to protect water quality. If you see anything other than water from a rain event in the curb, gutter, alley, or street, please let us know. Some examples include but are not limited to: irrigation water runoff, oil, grease, swimming pool and spa water, construction waste (including sediment), landscaping waste, wash water, and power washing waste water. All of these discharges pose a threat to the health of local waterways. Only rain is allowed down the drain.

There are several ways to report a storm water pollution concern. You can email your report to [email protected] . You may call our Storm Water Pollution Hotline at 619-235-1000. Or, you can use the Get it Done App. If you notice a violation actively occurring during business hours, calling the hotline will ensure the issues are addressed in the quickest way possible.

When reporting a storm water violation, please provide photos if possible and a detailed description including the time, location, type of substance, and when the violation occurred. This will help the City's Code Enforcement officers perform quick and thorough investigations. Please also include your contact information so that a Code Enforcement Officer can get in touch with you should they need further information about the violation.

To report other water waste that does not reach the storm drain system, such as over irrigation to sidewalks or driveways, please call the Public Utilities Department at 619-533-5271 or email them at [email protected] . For more information about water conservation, visit their website.

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We need your help to protect water quality. If you see anything other than water from a rain event in the curb, gutter, alley, or street, please let us know. Some examples include but are not limited to: irrigation water runoff, oil, grease, swimming pool and spa water, construction waste (including sediment), landscaping waste, wash water, and power washing waste water.

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Homeless People Decide to Live in Storm Drains

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Homeless People Decide to Live in Storm Drains

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Jazmin Griffith

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A large fire in the storm drain of a suburban Southern California neighborhood Saturday was the latest sign of the ongoing homeless crisis rocking the West Coast.

The blaze in Spring Valley, located just east of San Diego, took about three hours to put out and was started by a homeless camp living in storm drains, according to officials.

"The smoke was actually to the bottom of the concrete and we had to treat it like a structure fire," San Miguel Fire District spokesman Steve Moran told FOX5 San Diego. "We were afraid they are going to get entangled and trapped. It adds more risk to the job."

The growing encampment has transformed the concrete space off Goodland Lakes Park into one littered with trash, which can be fuel for any fire that breaks out.

Neighbors told FOX5 they've seen 8-to-10 people jump over a fence into the drainage area in the last year, camping out for days at a time.
COLUMBIA SPORTSWEAR MAY CLOSE PORTLAND OFFICE OVER DEATH THREATS, PUBLIC DEFECATION BY HOMELESS PEOPLE
The subterranean encampment is also causing some neighbors to feel anxious for their own safety.

"I do, but we got a pit bull and I got my two sons right now with me," one woman who did not wished to be identified told FOX5 when asked if she was scared for her family.

Fire officials have previously responded to the area for reports for small fires. Officials suspect people are stealing copper wire, burning the insulation off and turning it in for money, according to Moran.

The fire spokesman said while Spring Valley has had homeless people before, he's "never seen it like this."
HOMELESS PEOPLE DEFECATING ON LA STREETS FUELS HORROR HEPATITIS OUTBREAK, AS CITY FAULTED
"It's an explosion of this homeless issue," said Moran. "It's like squeezing the toothpaste tube. You know you squeeze them out of downtown and then they come out into these areas."

The San Diego area in particular has been dealing with a deadly side effect from the homeless crisis. The city now scrubs its sidewalks with bleach to counter defecating vagrants that unleashed a deadly hepatitis A outbreak that's spread to other cities and forced California to declare a state of emergency last month.

So far, 20 people, mostly homeless. have died in the past year due to the outbreak.

The rising numbers of homeless people has also forced cities and counties to spend millions - in some cases billions - in a search for solutions.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Homeless people found living in California storm drains after large fire

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A large fire in the storm drain of a suburban Southern California neighborhood Saturday was the latest sign of the ongoing homeless crisis rocking the West Coast. The blaze in Spring Valley, located just east of San Diego, took about three hours to put out and was started by a homeless camp living in storm drains, according to officials.

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Pennsylvania developed a storm water treatment

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Pennsylvania developed a storm water treatment

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Molly Blume

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Stormdrain Solutions - Catch Basin inserts, Stormdrain Filters For Storm Water Runoff

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Stormdrain Solutions Catch Basin Inserts help You Lower Your Stormwater Runoff Fees And Comply With The Clean Water Act.

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California regulates water pollution through the issuance of waste discharge requirements(permits).

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California regulates water pollution through the issuance of waste discharge requirements by the Regional Water Quality Control Board (Regional Board).

Permits can be individual, say a specific facility and its specific discharge, or general, such as facilities that discharge the same types of wastewater. The permits set limits on what may be dumped into our waters and where. A power plant may be limited on how much it can raise the temperature of its discharge (heat is a pollutant); a shipyard may have to submit monitoring reports to gauge how much copper it discharges into the bay.

Coastkeeper reviews these permits to ensure that they contain adequate precautions to prevent harm of our waters. The language can be numeric - so many milligrams of mercury per day, or narrative - no toxic substances in toxic amounts. Sometimes we work directly with dischargers to achieve strong requirements; often we submit our comments to the Regional Board directly. The board members review all the comments on a permit, take testimony from all sides and decide on the permit. The Regional Board's board members can approve the permit, approve it with modifications or deny it.

After approval of a permit, Coastkeeper reviews monitoring reports to ensure the facility meets its requirements. If we see violations, we can bring litigation to correct the problems. Every five years, the Regional Board must renew the permit, which gives another opportunity to evaluate the requirements and advocate for further protections or modifications. ( back to top)

Learn more about permits in these categories:

Large Municipalities

Under the Clean Water Act, medium and large municipalities with populations of 100,000 or more are required to have a permit for their municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4). The systems are called "separate" storm sewer systems because they do not join with the sanitary sewer system, and the storm sewer system leads straight into our waters instead of into a treatment plant.

In San Diego, we've had several versions of the municipal stormwater permit. The region adopted our latest permit on May 8, 2013. It covers 18 cities in San Diego, along with San Diego County, the port and the airport, along with portions of South Orange County and Riverside County. The permit focuses on the health of our watersheds and requires all the municipalities within a watershed to create a Water Quality Improvement Plan. The Water Quality Improvement Plan, which will be crafted over two years with the help of public participation, will identify priority pollution conditions, strategies to address those problems, numeric goals and timelines to achieve those goals.

San Diego Coastkeeper worked for almost two years to get this new permit adopted, and we are committed to ensuring the Water Quality Improvement Plans help us get cleaner water faster. Public participation is important to ensuring these plans are robust, protect the environment and find creative ways to solve our water pollution problems in San Diego. To give your input on the plan, watch for notices on the Regional Clearinghouse and keep an eye on our blog for opportunities to participate. ( back to top)

Small Municipalities and Nontraditional Sources

Small municipalities and nontraditional sources, like universities, schools, and military installations (sometimes called "Phase II" permittees) are usually covered by a general stormwater permit. In California, the State Water Resources Control Board adopted a general small MS4 permit, or Phase II MS4 permit, on February 5, 2013. ( back to top)

Industrial Sources

The Clean Water Act assumes that some industrial facilities are more likely than others to create the type of pollution that can contribute to urban runoff problems. The Clean Water Act requires these facilities to do one of three things:

1. prove that no stormwater runoff leaves the facility,

2. apply for and be issued an individual stormwater permit or

3. apply for coverage under a general industrial stormwater permit.

In California, the State Water Resources Control Board is revising the 1997 general industrial stormwater permit. We expect it will adopt a finalized permit in late 2013. The general industrial permit requires covered facilities to implement management measures that will achieve the performance standard of best available technology economically achievable and best conventional pollutant control technology. The general industrial permit also requires the development of a Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan and a monitoring plan. The Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan must identify sources of pollutants and the means to manage the sources to reduce storm water pollution. The general industrial permit requires covered facilities to submit an annual report each year on July 1. Facility operators may be able to participate in a group monitoring program. ( back to top)

Roads

Roads can significantly contribute to stormwater pollution and are covered under the Clean Water Act. In California, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is responsible for the design, construction, management, and maintenance of the State highway system and is therefore subject to the Clean Water Act's stormwater permitting requirements. On September 19, 2012, the State Water Resources Control Board issued the latest version of Caltrans' stormwater permit, which became effective on July 1, 2013. Caltrans' Storm Water Management Plan describes the procedures and practices used to reduce or eliminate the discharge of pollutants to storm drainage systems and receiving waters. Caltrans must submit a revised Storm Water Management Plan to the State Water Board for approval by July 1, 2014. ( back to top)

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Stormwater Permits - San Diego Coastkeeper

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California regulates water pollution through the issuance of waste discharge requirements by the Regional Water Quality Control Board (Regional Board). Permits can be individual, say a specific facility and its specific discharge, or general, such as facilities that discharge the same types of wastewater.

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Abby Ridgeway

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Each year, San Diego Coastkeeper and Surfrider Foundation, San Diego Chapter partner to host over 30 cleanups throughout the county. The thousands of volunteers who come out to clean our beaches also play an integral role in data collection to help us understand the types and distribution of debris we find. In recent years, we have found that an alarming number of small debris items dominate our tally sheets. The most prevalent, persistent and problematic are cigarette butts, polystyrene and plastics. Combined, these small and frequently-overlooked items account for 70 percent of all debris along San Diego's shoreline. Learn more about:

Cigarette Butts

We found over 75,000 cigarette butts along San Diego County's beaches in 2015, but the problem isn't isolated to Southern California. During Coastal Cleanup Day in 2015, volunteers around the world collected 2,127,565 cigarette butts during the single-day cleanup. Both globally and locally, they are the most dominant and commonly found trash on our shorelines.

Cigarette butts may be small and easily overlooked, but all those little cigarette butts add up to a huge problem for water quality and environmental health. Cigarettes are not biodegradable, which means when they get thrown on the ground, on the beach or out the car window, they won't disintegrate or disappear.
Cigarettes are made of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic, which slowly breaks down, but never fully decomposes. They also contain chemicals that leech into the water when introduced to the aquatic environment.

Sick of cigarette butts on your beach?

Help us fix our marine debris problem one cigarette butt and one beach at a time by advocating for your community, joining us for any one of our beach cleanups and encouraging those who use cigarettes to dispose of them properly. You can also join a TerraCycle campaign to help up-cycle cigarette butts.

The pervasiveness and toxicity of littered cigarette butts is a massive problem, but with a little help from everyone, it's one we can start to turn around . ( Return to top)

Plastic Pollution

Plastics make up more than 60 percent of all marine debris. They pose a serious problem to our marine environment as their synthetic material makeup resists natural degradation processes.

They do not biodegrade. Plastics break down in a photodegrading process - they splinter into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually forming "plastic dust." During this process, they release toxins that harm the ocean and wildlife and people that depend on it.

Regardless of their size, no creatures can digest plastic pollution bits. Plastics in the ocean today will, in some way, stay forever: they will break down into smaller particles, infiltrate the food chain or eventually sink to become part of the makeup of the ocean floor.

You can play a part by keeping plastic debris and other contaminants out of San Diego street gutters and storm drains. Take a moment to think about the end result for each product you buy. Can you truly dispose of "disposable" items or will they actually just last forever, out of sight in our landfills? Reducing our dependence on convenient - but ultimately unnecessary - plastics is a crucial first step in reducing plastic debris in our waters.

You can also chip in to fund our pollution prevention work, become a Coastkeeper member and volunteer at San Diego cleanups. ( Return to top)

Styrofoam

Plastic foam, commonly known as Styrofoam™, endangers human health and the environment.

Plastic foam debris does not biodegrade, but breaks into very small pieces that birds and marine wildlife regularly mistake for food. At our cleanups, these are some of the smallest debris items we encounter and one of the biggest problems.

It's bad for humans, too. The National Toxicology Program lists Styrene, the primary component of Styrofoam™, as a carcinogen. Styrene leaches from the foam when it contacts oily, fatty foods, or when heated. Food represents a significant source of styrene exposure to the American population.

Are there alternatives to plastic foam? Restaurants have alternatives to Styrofoam™ packaging that won't hurt the environment or your pocketbook. A wide range of biodegradable, recyclable or compostable packaging options are available, but some options are not beneficial to the environment or viable for our recycling infrastructure. Good options are recyclable plastic or post-consumer paper. Better yet, bring your own take-home containers when you dine out.
Why make the switch?
"It takes three major components to create change: the manufacturer, the retailer and the customer. Often, the customer demands change, and it happens because the retailer and the manufacturer want to make money. But we think that it's our job to offer products that are sustainable and positive. Right now we sell junk and spend millions on marketing to convince our customers that it's good. Why shouldn't we just do good in the first place?" - Kristen Buchanan, Founder /CEO of GoodOnYa deli ( Return to top)

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Plastic Pollution - San Diego Coastkeeper

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Each year, San Diego Coastkeeper and Surfrider Foundation, San Diego Chapter partner to host over 30 cleanups throughout the county. The thousands of volunteers who come out to clean our beaches also play an integral role in data collection to help us understand the types and distribution of debris we find.

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Homeless near San Diego river dump trash

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Homeless near San Diego river dump trash

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Scott Billitti

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Volunteer Paul Bareno's yellow shirt makes him easy to see as he helps clean up a stretch of San Diego riverbed.

"We were here, I'm guessing, we were here about two months ago, maybe less. And we got it pretty clean. Yeah we hit the same amount of places regularly," Bareno said.

There is plenty to clean up. There are clothes, food wrappers and at one campsite, long strips of yellow plastic tubing that's supposed to be a temporary sandbag. None of it is surprising.

"I think just the amount of trash you can find in one place, but that seems to happen pretty often," Bareno said.

The San Diego River is more crowded these days since the city began moving people who are homeless off of downtown streets. The extra people put additional pressure on an already stressed ecosystem.

The trees and overgrown plants hide the people, campsites and trash.

"Yeah, you and John can start on that site back there," said Tiffany Swiderski, the crew's team leader. "And then also up on the hillside, there's some stuff over there," said Swiderski, who works for the San Diego River Park Foundation. She has walked through this tangle of brush, trees and overgrown paths many times and she takes the time to talk to the people who seek shelter here.

"It is easy to just go to a bad place, with all these negative emotions, but when you meet people and talk to them about their situation, it helps to humanize things," Swiderski said.

Some of the clandestine campsites are hidden deep inside the brush. Others are just a step away from a busy street. Close to all the camps are makeshift bathrooms. One is near a tree, just 20 feet from the spot where a tent was pitched a day or so ago.

"You can see here that this is all used toilet paper. You can see human feces, there's some right here, not even with the protection of the log right there," Swiderski said. "But yeah, there are multiple sites like this, around this property alone, where each encampment kind of has its own bathroom area that the people that had been living here kind of designated that as their restroom."

It is dry here now, but when winter rains come, the river's sandy bed will fill up with water.

In some spots, paths that are dry now will be under 10 feet of water and that water will carry everything downstream.

"People camping on streets, in storm drains, literally living in forest or creek, underground in the storm drain. Their wastes are going somewhere and it's not going to a toilet. It's going into the river," said Dave Gibson, director of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Local cities and the county share responsibility for making sure the water quality along the river meets federal standards. But pollution permits don't require frequent water quality testing.

"This is a human problem and humans can solve this problem," Gibson said.

The San Diego County Department of Environmental Health does regularly test water quality at the mouth of the river, near Ocean Beach. But testing upriver is much less frequent.

San Diego County officials did not want to answer questions about water testing in the San Diego River, in person, but they did answer some questions by email.

The county conceded there is only limited testing in the watershed.

The email said, "It appears that all coastal watersheds experience inputs of human waste, so this issue is not unique to San Diego River."

Cities are required to track stormwater drains to check for possible sewage pipe leaks and the county and other communities have done testing for specific studies.

But the river is ephemeral. Sometimes there's no water to test. Or the water that does exist is in stranded stagnant pools.

The Water Quality Board's Dave Gibson said the situation becomes more complicated when a lot of people are living in the overgrown riverbank.

"Because there's simply not adequate access to sanitation because the kinds of sanitation issues that existed on the streets, which led to hepatitis outbreaks exist in triplicate in the river bottom itself. What's more is they now provide a vehicle for those wastes to end up downstream on beaches and on properties they otherwise wouldn't have been," Gibson said.

The regional water agency is considering issuing clean-up and abatement orders for locations where they know homeless camps exist.

And while the county has announced plans to do more extensive testing along the river, the water agency said waiting three years for useful data doesn't make sense.

Gibson is considering issuing an executive investigative order for the watershed that will push for answers sooner.

The San Diego River is more crowded since the city began moving homeless people off of downtown streets. The extra people are putting additional pressure on an already stressed ecosystem.

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Increased Homeless Population Along San Diego River Hampers Water Quality

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Volunteer Paul Bareno's yellow shirt makes him easy to see as he helps clean up a stretch of San Diego riverbed. "We were here, I'm guessing, we were here about two months ago, maybe less. And we got it pretty clean. Yeah we hit the same amount of places regularly," Bareno said.

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San Diego's Stormwater Management Protects Coastal Waters!

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San Diego's Stormwater Management Protects Coastal Waters!

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Jazmin Griffith

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San Diego, CA, is a city with scenic coastlines along the Pacific Ocean, a world-class zoo, a long association with the US Navy, a growing population and economy, and a lively tourism industry. Managing stormwater in this beautiful city involves dealing with a myriad of challenges.

Drew Kleis works with those challenges daily. He serves as deputy director of the Storm Water Division in the City's Department of Transportation and Storm Water. One of those challenges, he says, is "our storm drainage system itself. The city is over 100 years old, and a significant portion of the system was developed post-World War II. The infrastructure is approaching the end of its life and in need of replacement."

Another challenge to managing stormwater in San Diego is "topography and soil. In Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, they have a blend of pervious soils that can infiltrate stormwater easily and even recharge groundwater," says Kleis. "In San Diego, we have a series of mesa tops and canyons with impervious clay soils that drain to the ocean."

In addition, "The mesas have natural wetlands. These vernal pools are shallow depressions that hold water [from the heavy winter and spring rains] for several months until it evaporates."

San Diego's weather pattern adds to the difficulty of managing stormwater there. The climate is semi-arid, but rainfalls are intense. That means detention requirements are greater on any stormwater project.

"We get rain for only three to four months a year. 85% of our rain falls from December to March," says Kleis.

When the winter storms hit the city, San Diego's Storm Patrol swings into action. Its members have specific strategies to implement before, during, and after storms, all aimed at minimizing flooding and damage.

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Before a storm occurs, Storm Patrol members conduct final sweeps of flood-prone areas, such as Mission Valley. They deploy portable pumps and set out "No Parking" signs in these areas.

During the storms, the members are on call to respond to such situations as downed trees and blocked drains, particularly in the flood-prone locations. They move the portable pumps as needed. After the storm, they evaluate damage, the amount of flooding, and street closings, and devise ways to prepare better for the next storm.

For most of the year, when very little rain falls, San Diego still deals with pollutant-carrying runoff. Low-flow diverters-80 of them-send runoff from any source to the storm system, keeping it out of Mission Bay.

San Diego's climate makes it more difficult to use green infrastructure there. With California's recent years-long drought, conserving water and using it wisely is paramount for any project. Green plants need irrigation.

Then there is the intense heat, especially in hot areas such as traffic islands surrounded by asphalt. Heat stress makes even native plants wilt and die. Bioswales are frequently lined with cobblestones and very few plants.

"We're trying to build green infrastructure in a way that doesn't use irrigation," says Kleis, adding that this means extensive use of native plants.

San Diego does not have a stormwater utility, which raises funds by assessing fees on the system's commercial and residential users. Instead, California Proposition 218 requires a public vote for any increase in funds for stormwater projects.

"Most stormwater projects are challenged in funding," he says. "Water and wastewater funds can be raised [without a public vote of agreement], but not stormwater funds."

Given these multiple challenges, managing the division's $4.25 billion operation effectively is made somewhat easier by its Water Asset Management Plan.

"We're very proud of that document," says Kleis. "It's one of the first in the US. It integrates flood control and water-quality needs into one place. It brings all of our funding needs together so we're more effective at setting priorities."

Street sweeping plays an essential role in municipal stormwater management. Kleis says San Diego has done a number of studies to make its street sweeping operation as efficient and productive as possible. The studies include which types of sweepers work best on which types of streets. Hilly streets are swept with mechanical broom sweepers. On flat streets, regenerative-air sweepers are used.

San Diego's Bannock Avenue Neighborhood Streetscape project used green infrastructure to reduce both stormwater pollutants and runoff volume into the Tecolote Canyon watershed. It involved curb cuts to divert stormwater into swales between the streets and sidewalks.

Native plants used included scarlet monkey flower, western redbud trees, and various California native grasses. The project cost $1.8 million.

The green parking lot at Kellogg Park is a $982,000 green infrastructure project. The park is in La Jolla Shores, in a location designated as an Area of Special Biological Significance (ASBS). The California State Water Resources Control Board created these special areas to protect the Pacific Ocean. They are in some of the most pristine and biologically diverse sections along the California coast.

Kellogg Park is a lovely area and popular with beachgoers, as well as an environmentally sensitive area where pollution from runoff could cause significant damage. Keeping runoff out of the ABSB required removing 18,000 square feet of asphalt and concrete from the north and south ends of the parking lot. The impervious material was replaced with permeable pavers.

A vegetated bioswale was installed on the parking lot's east side. A filter bed was added to the west side between the parking lot and the walk leading to the beach.

Another municipal low impact development (LID) or green infrastructure project is situated at the four-corner intersection of 43rd Street, National Avenue, San Pasqual Street, and Logan Avenue. The project was created to reduce stormwater pollutants that enter Chollas Creek and San Diego Bay.

The first component of the project includes 25 filter cells located in the landscaping right of way strip between the curb and the sidewalk. Runoff from the adjacent streets' travel lanes drains first into inlets that filter out trash, then flows through a specified soil mix that will remove metals and other roadway pollutants.

The second component that handles additional runoff from the streets is a shallow landscaped bioretention basin. It also contains the soil mix to remove metals and other roadway pollutants.

An Airport on the Bay
San Diego International Airport is located close to San Diego Bay. It is the busiest single-runway airport in the US, but it occupies only 661 acres.

"We're very site-constrained," says Brendan Reed, environmental affairs director for the airport.

Fifteen stormwater outfalls at the edge of the airport's land send runoff into San Diego Bay. The airport is the last stop at the end of a large municipal drainage system.

The relatively small space, proximity to the bay, and high demand for flights add to the challenges Reed and Richard Gilb, manager of environmental affairs for the airport, face. They also must consider the same climate, soil, and storm patterns faced by the City's stormwater officials.

To better meet those challenges, "About two years ago we spent a year looking at our water use and constraints," says Reed. "We developed our Water Stewardship Plan focusing on three items: water quality, water usage, and flood resilience."

He adds that the plan is the result of input from consultants Haley & Aldrich and from every department at the airport. "It explains where we want to end up in 20 years, with synergy between those three items."

Using green infrastructure or LID to manage stormwater at the airport isn't easy. Given the climate and rainfall amount, it is difficult to make it cost effective.

"Given our small size, we don't have a lot of landscaping. There's no grass along the runways, for example. Our site on soil with lots of clay has handicapped our ability to put in LID," says Gilb. One example that has worked is "two and three-quarters acres of bioswales within a total area of 25 acres at the rental car site. With our desert semi-arid climate, we have more xeriscaping and rock," he says.

A side effect of the xeriscaping is that "as much as we'd like to capture rain, we don't need a lot of irrigation," he explains.

The San Diego airport qualifies for a Phase 1 NPDES stormwater permit. "Not too many airports are managed by these permits," notes Gilb. "We get to run with the big dogs."

Describing California's stringent multi-sector general stormwater permit, Gilb explains that BMPs under the new permit are more specific and are tied to performance. "In the past, permit holders just had to put in LID somewhere that met some basic performance. But recently-beginning in February, 2016-there is a hierarchy for post-construction BMPs. Harvesting and reusing [stormwater] is at the top tier. If you can't do that, you're supposed to infiltrate it."

The bottom tier of the hierarchy is to substitute offsite measures for onsite harvesting or infiltration. This route is costly, because it requires purchasing the right to claim performance of a BMP located elsewhere.

Despite the site and climate constraints, Gilb says the airport has a very good chance of meeting that top tier. It will harvest the stormwater, but instead of using it for landscaping irrigation, the airport will use it in the central plant's cooling towers. Water will be harvested at a new three-story parking garage with 2,900 stalls. When the facility is finished in June 2018, it will capture and treat approximately 2 million gallons of stormwater in a year. Storage capacity is 107,000 gallons.

The runoff flows into reinforced concrete pipes 36 inches in diameter. Demand for water for the cooling towers is constant. By using this reclaimed and treated water instead of potable water, the airport will reduce its water bill considerably.

Another stormwater feature at the airport is the San Park II. This 16-acre parking facility sits along the Pacific Coast Highway. Beneath its 2,003 parking spaces are 12 Modular Wetlands units from Bio Clean of San Diego. The MWS Linear model installed saves space and treats pollutants to a higher level than does bioretention. It functions as a horizontal-flow biofilter. Because the units are placed at traffic grade level, they have no effect on the parking lot space or design.

The subsurface system operates in three stages. Pretreatment collects trash and sediment, making their removal easy for cleaning crews. Compared to using traditional LID measures, the airport saved more than a half-acre of land, which made more parking spaces possible.

Sea level rise is a topic mentioned more and more often in stormwater management. As in other coastal communities, San Diego stormwater officials have been studying it and its potential effects.

Reed says that sea level rise would cause "further intrusion up our stormwater drains, creating a tail water condition. Hence, any way to capture and reuse, or to infiltrate
-to get water out of the outfall drains-is worth considering."

About five years ago, a conference on a regional adaptation strategy for San Diego was held. The airport "worked with the Port of San Diego, the City, the US Navy, and other stakeholders to study the impact sea level rise would have on the built environment and the natural environment here," says Reed.

He adds, "We've done some modeling on sea level rise. We were using two feet rise, working with consultants. Some of that work is in our water stewardship plan."

Gilb says that managing stormwater at the airport currently costs about $2 million per year. He and Reed anticipate that cost increasing as the airport staff works through the water stewardship plan and future redevelopment.

"We have a pretty significant redevelopment project, covering almost half the site [planned for the future]. "Because of that pretty large planned construction, we're more connected to the idea of a stormwater capture system that will allow us flexibility in how we capture and reuse the water," says Reed.

Student Housing on Campus

The Charles David Keeling Apartments provide student housing on West Campus of the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). The complex is named in honor of the late Scripps Institute of Oceanography professor who first suggested human behavior's contribution to the rising level of carbon dioxide.

"It is the first LEED Platinum project at UCSD," says project manager Greg Kump of Nasland Engineering in San Diego. The cost of the project was about $50 million. Work took place from 2008 through 2011.

The site covers about 2 acres. Several green infrastructure components for managing stormwater contributed points toward the project's total score for its LEED certification.

Virtually all of the site's stormwater is handled onsite, but not all of it is treated. Keeping the runoff onsite prevents it from flowing to nearby Skeleton Canyon, a biologically sensitive area.

A bioinfiltration basin was added to the interior courtyards for stormwater treatment. A roof drain went underneath this area, but it is exposed by way of a metal grating so that people walking through the area can see the downspout in action and understand the stormwater's path.

"We had to do a lot of soil remediation in our stormwater treatment [installations]," says Kump. "We put in more organic material to help plants grow."

The green roof is the most impressive LID feature. Planted with succulents and other native plants plus some low-growing shrubs such as English stonecrop, the rooftop draws students and visitors to spend leisure time there.

"From there you can see all of the water parts: the LID basin on the west side, the bioswales in the middle courtyard, and the stormwater areas on the southside," says Kump.

Perforated pipes under the green roof carry runoff not used by the plants to the complex's mechanical room. This water is reused for irrigation.

The project won a number of awards, including an Engineering Excellence Small Firm Merit Award from ACEC California, Outstanding Environmental Engineering Project from ASCE Region 9, Outstanding Chapter Project of the Year from the American Public Works Association, and an Award of Merit from ASCE.

San Diego Mesa College

San Diego Mesa College has worked to create a sustainable campus, aiming for a LEED Silver certification. Its ongoing revitalization will finish with a new entrance to the campus. Newly constructed facilities save energy and manage stormwater in an impressive way.

"This project was a long time in the making. Institutional projects take time. We started in 2010 and finished in June 2016," says David McCullough, principal with San Diego's McCullough Landscape Architecture.

"One of the things we did, in conjunction with the architects and mechanical engineers, was to capture rainwater from the roof," he says. "The challenge of the project was to coordinate the various elements."

Part of the roof is adjacent to the college's Department of Culinary Arts. Planters were installed for the culinary students to use in growing vegetables and herbs for dishes served in the student-run café.

A tank to collect HVAC condensate to use for irrigating plants growing around the building was installed. The building's loading dock was built up, and a void for this water was created within the concrete structure. (HVAC condensate can be used to irrigate landscaping plants, but not for plants that will be eaten). Another 700-gallon tank was installed on the roof to capture rainwater that is used to irrigate the plants that the students are growing.

"Ordinarily you would try to hide a tank. We wanted something decorated. We wanted the tank to become an element in the design of the space, and we wanted people using the culinary garden to know that this was the correct tank to use [for watering the plants]," says McCullough.

Six belowground cisterns each hold 1,700 gallons of stormwater. Annually, they account for 192,000 gallons of stormwater collected, which will be used for irrigating campus landscaping. For landscaped areas around the campus, "The primary plant we used was one that does well in a lot of situations: common dwarf mat rush," he says.

The California native plant deer grass was used in the bioretention basins. McCullough notes that it "does well in moist conditions. It goes dormant if it dries out, but it comes back. Deer grass was used by Native Americans in this area for making baskets. They ate its seeds, too."

For additional infiltration of stormwater runoff, large sections of permeable paving were planned for walkways and other hard surfaces. Unfortunately, the area for permeable paving had to be reduced significantly because a large swath of the area had to be accessible to, and strong enough for, fire trucks.

"After the geotechnical report was done [it revealed] that soils there were not good enough to take the weight of the fire trucks, so we had to use concrete," says McCullough. "We installed less than 1,000 square feet of permeable pavers."

These CalArc Narrow Modular pavers from Stepstone Inc. measure 3 inches by 18 inches by 4 inches. The pavers have a light sandblast finish and are of three different colors that go together visually.

Three bioswales were installed around the edges of the property to treat stormwater runoff. In total, the bioswales cover about 1,000 square feet.

An HDPE cellular confinement system manufactured by Hanes Geo Components was used to keep the soil in place and prevent erosion. Filled with cobblestone, this TerraCell 280 mesh is 4 inches deep.

McCullough says an interesting aspect of the project was the reusing
of existing gardens that had been created by grounds staff members
of the college.

"We stockpiled and reused rocks and boulders and felled trees [that had been part of the garden]. After the building was done, they were reinstalled. It gave the staff member pride in what they had created and an ownership in the project, an incentive to treat it with respect."

The Commons Building and the Exercise Science Building will "become the main gateway entry to the college and [will lead] into the quadrangle when everything is finalized," says McCullough.

"We needed an area for sunken detention basins to store heavy rains," explains McCullough. "We kept the dirt we excavated to create two elliptical garden spaces between concrete patios." The reserved dirt was piled up to create two domes, with trees and drought-tolerant native grass (seashore paspalum) planted on top. Students can sit on the domes, which have tiers similar to the levels of an amphitheater.

The areas where the soil was removed became the detention basins. Each basin is about 20 by 40 feet and 3 feet deep. They were planted with California field sedge and native grasses, including purple needle grass.

"You save some money if you can move soil [already on the site] around. It is much cheaper and less wasteful than having soil trucked in," notes McCullough.

This project won an Urban Land Institute San Diego-Tijuana Healthy Places Award.

The climate and ocean proximity that give San Diego its beautiful beaches, plus the soil types, obviously pose constraints and challenges for managing stormwater there. Fortunately, as the projects and BMPs described above show, San Diego also has some creative minds at work on these challenges.

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How San Diego's Stormwater Management Strategy Protects Coastal Waters - Forester Network

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San Diego, CA, is a city with scenic coastlines along the Pacific Ocean, a world-class zoo, a long association with the US Navy, a growing population and economy, and a lively tourism industry. Managing stormwater in this beautiful city involves dealing with a myriad of challenges.

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Painters sentenced for dumping lead paint into San Diego Storm Drain 

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Painters sentenced for dumping lead paint into San Diego Storm Drain 

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Jake Palid

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The CEO and two employees of a Riverside County-based painting company were sentenced after pleading guilty to contaminating San Diego's storm water system by power-washing painted curbs and allowing toxic lead paint chips to flow into storm drains, City Attorney Mara Elliott announced Friday.

The trio were placed on probation and ordered to pay more than$12,000 in fines and restitution, Elliott said.

Ochoa Striping Services Inc. was contracted to sandblast paint from curbs in a Del Cerro neighborhood, Elliott said. That method of paint removal would have allowed workers to safely clean up and dispose of hazardous material.

Instead, the painters illegally hooked up their equipment to a city fire hydrant, using municipal water to power-wash the curb, releasing a flow of toxic paint chips into the street, gutter and storm drain, Elliott said.

Courtesy of San Diego City Attorney's Office

Toxic lead paint is seen running toward a storm water drain on June 28, 2017. Ochoa Striping Services Inc. was contracted to sandblast painted curbs in Del Cerro, but instead power-washed it into the storm water system.

Toxic lead paint is seen running toward a storm water drain on June 28, 2017. Ochoa Striping Services Inc. was contracted to sandblast painted curbs in Del Cerro, but instead power-washed it into the storm water system. (Courtesy of San Diego City Attorney's Office)

A Transportation and Storm Water Division employee, investigating a citizen complaint, determined the painters had improperly disposed of potentially hazardous material and told them to take immediate corrective actions. Despite the warning, the painters returned the next day and continued their work in the same manner. Paint samples were taken and tested, confirming the presence of lead in the paint.

Lead paint, when swallowed even in small amounts, can cause permanent brain damage, learning disabilities and behavioral problems in young children, Elliott said.

Though banned for decades, it is present in many older homes and neighborhoods.

"Businesses that recklessly engage in illegal dumping schemes endanger public health and our ocean ecology,'' Elliott said. "In this case, the business released lead paint chips into our storm drain system, which flows into the ocean. This is an inexcusable assault on the health and safety of those who frequent our beautiful beaches, particularly children who are susceptible to lead poisoning.''

Under a plea agreement, defendant Luis Ochoa Ramirez, CEO of Ochoa Striping Services, will pay more than $10,000 in fines and restitution and perform 80 hours of volunteer work service through a nonprofit organization involved in ocean and/or bay cleanup within the city of San Diego.

The employees who did the power washing will each pay more than $1,000 in fines.

All three defendants were ordered to complete a San Diego County Department of Environmental Health-approved class addressing the proper disposal of hazardous waste.

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Painters sentenced for dumping lead paint into San Diego storm drain system

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The CEO and two employees of a Riverside County-based painting company were sentenced after pleading guilty to contaminating San Diego's storm water system by power-washing painted curbs and allowing toxic lead paint chips to flow into storm drains, City Attorney Mara Elliott announced Friday.

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Jack Montesano

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Urban runoff is the single biggest threat to water quality in San Diego. ¹

Urban runoff is water that flows over man-made surfaces in densely populated areas and drains directly into our water bodies. Stormwater, irrigation and other water absorb the materials on top of the surfaces including pollutants such as oil, grease, pesticides, metals, bacteria and viruses and toxic chemicals.

And then washes it all into our rivers, bays, lakes and ocean.

In Southern California, storm drains carry millions of gallons of polluted runoff to the ocean everyday. In San Diego, all public storm drains directly link to our beaches without any wastewater treatment.

Urban runoff creates negative impacts such as these:

Human illnesses have been clearly linked to recreational use of coastal waters near storm drains.

Urban runoff pollutants build up in the tissues of fish and other aquatic animals, which people eventually eat.

1 Southern California. 2000. KC Schiff, MJ Allen, EY Zeng, SM Bay. Marine Pollution Bulletin 41:76-93.

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Urban Runoff in San Diego - San Diego Coastkeeper

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Urban runoff is the single biggest threat to water quality in San Diego.1 Urban runoff is water that flows over man-made surfaces in densely populated areas and drains directly into our water bodies. Stormwater, irrigation and other water absorb the materials on top of the surfaces including pollutants such as oil, grease, pesticides, metals, bacteria ...

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How Stormwater Permits and Regulations work

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How Stormwater Permits and Regulations work

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Adrian

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California regulates water pollution through the issuance of waste discharge requirements by the Regional Water Quality Control Board (Regional Board).

Permits can be individual, say a specific facility and its specific discharge, or general, such as facilities that discharge the same types of wastewater. The permits set limits on what may be dumped into our waters and where. A power plant may be limited on how much it can raise the temperature of its discharge (heat is a pollutant); a shipyard may have to submit monitoring reports to gauge how much copper it discharges into the bay.

Coastkeeper reviews these permits to ensure that they contain adequate precautions to prevent harm of our waters. The language can be numeric - so many milligrams of mercury per day, or narrative - no toxic substances in toxic amounts. Sometimes we work directly with dischargers to achieve strong requirements; often we submit our comments to the Regional Board directly. The board members review all the comments on a permit, take testimony from all sides and decide on the permit. The Regional Board's board members can approve the permit, approve it with modifications or deny it.

After approval of a permit, Coastkeeper reviews monitoring reports to ensure the facility meets its requirements. If we see violations, we can bring litigation to correct the problems. Every five years, the Regional Board must renew the permit, which gives another opportunity to evaluate the requirements and advocate for further protections or modifications. ( back to top)

Learn more about permits in these categories:

Large Municipalities

Under the Clean Water Act, medium and large municipalities with populations of 100,000 or more are required to have a permit for their municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4). The systems are called "separate" storm sewer systems because they do not join with the sanitary sewer system, and the storm sewer system leads straight into our waters instead of into a treatment plant.

In San Diego, we've had several versions of the municipal stormwater permit. The region adopted our latest permit on May 8, 2013. It covers 18 cities in San Diego, along with San Diego County, the port and the airport, along with portions of South Orange County and Riverside County. The permit focuses on the health of our watersheds and requires all the municipalities within a watershed to create a Water Quality Improvement Plan. The Water Quality Improvement Plan, which will be crafted over two years with the help of public participation, will identify priority pollution conditions, strategies to address those problems, numeric goals and timelines to achieve those goals.

San Diego Coastkeeper worked for almost two years to get this new permit adopted, and we are committed to ensuring the Water Quality Improvement Plans help us get cleaner water faster. Public participation is important to ensuring these plans are robust, protect the environment and find creative ways to solve our water pollution problems in San Diego. To give your input on the plan, watch for notices on the Regional Clearinghouse and keep an eye on our blog for opportunities to participate. ( back to top)

Small Municipalities and Nontraditional Sources

Small municipalities and nontraditional sources, like universities, schools, and military installations (sometimes called "Phase II" permittees) are usually covered by a general stormwater permit. In California, the State Water Resources Control Board adopted a general small MS4 permit, or Phase II MS4 permit, on February 5, 2013. ( back to top)

Industrial Sources

The Clean Water Act assumes that some industrial facilities are more likely than others to create the type of pollution that can contribute to urban runoff problems. The Clean Water Act requires these facilities to do one of three things:

1. prove that no stormwater runoff leaves the facility,

2. apply for and be issued an individual stormwater permit or

3. apply for coverage under a general industrial stormwater permit.

In California, the State Water Resources Control Board is revising the 1997 general industrial stormwater permit. We expect it will adopt a finalized permit in late 2013. The general industrial permit requires covered facilities to implement management measures that will achieve the performance standard of best available technology economically achievable and best conventional pollutant control technology. The general industrial permit also requires the development of a Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan and a monitoring plan. The Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan must identify sources of pollutants and the means to manage the sources to reduce storm water pollution. The general industrial permit requires covered facilities to submit an annual report each year on July 1. Facility operators may be able to participate in a group monitoring program. ( back to top)

Roads

Roads can significantly contribute to stormwater pollution and are covered under the Clean Water Act. In California, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is responsible for the design, construction, management, and maintenance of the State highway system and is therefore subject to the Clean Water Act's stormwater permitting requirements. On September 19, 2012, the State Water Resources Control Board issued the latest version of Caltrans' stormwater permit, which became effective on July 1, 2013. Caltrans' Storm Water Management Plan describes the procedures and practices used to reduce or eliminate the discharge of pollutants to storm drainage systems and receiving waters. Caltrans must submit a revised Storm Water Management Plan to the State Water Board for approval by July 1, 2014. ( back to top)

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Stormwater Permits - San Diego Coastkeeper

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California regulates water pollution through the issuance of waste discharge requirements by the Regional Water Quality Control Board (Regional Board). Permits can be individual, say a specific facility and its specific discharge, or general, such as facilities that discharge the same types of wastewater.

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Deja Taylor

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In the next five years, the city of San Diego will have to increase its spending on stormwater projects an average of $164 million annually, more than it costs to run its park and library systems combined.

To help pay for this, the city could increase homeowners' monthly stormwater fees by more than 1,000 percent, though any increase would require a public vote. If the city doesn't find the money, it could face up to $37,500 in daily fines every time it pollutes the ocean.

"That's a little sobering," City Councilman David Alvarez said Wednesday after hearing a report with all these numbers.

The astronomical figures punctuate a long-running tension for the city over whether to chip away at the backlog of broken infrastructure or build new things residents need.

But unlike San Diego's roads, which continue to deteriorate, and emergency response times, which still fall short of city goals, a failure to invest in stormwater projects could lead to a direct hit to the city's pocketbook through lawsuits and state and federal fines.

New, more stringent regulations from the region's water quality control board detail the amount of pollution allowed to flow from the city's stormdrain system into the ocean - including from rain, people washing their cars and debris from creeks.

The city's price tag includes the costs of repairing stormdrain pipes, but also from more frequent street sweeping and even buying land to collect pollutants before they're washed into the system.

The stormwater department argues that if it doesn't begin to ramp up spending now, it can't possibly meet water quality mandates by the time many go into effect in 2018. The city has known the new regulations were coming for a while - former Mayor Jerry Sanders batted around trying to hike stormwater fees - but ultimately no one took any major steps toward dealing with it. The city's projecting it will cost $2.7 billion over the next 17 years to comply with the rules.

"The thinking was, it's in the future and it's such a ridiculous cost, it can't be correct," said Seth Gates, a co-author of the report for the city's independent budget analyst. "It's on us now, and our staff is saying this is the cost for compliance. People still can't believe it."

To be sure, the numbers could represent a worst-case scenario. Stormwater officials told a City Council committee on Wednesday that they're negotiating with the water quality board to make some of the regulations less stringent. For instance, changes to how metal pollution is calculated in Chollas Creek, which runs through City Heights, southeastern San Diego and Barrio Logan, could lower overall costs by $800 million, officials said.

The city is, however, beginning to take these numbers seriously. In its most recent bond issue, the city told investors that rising stormwater costs were a risk to its financial stability.

Ways to pay for all this have their drawbacks. Any increase to stormwater fees would require a majority vote of all property owners or two-thirds of the general electorate. The city could continue to borrow money for upgrades, but that would compete with money for street and building repairs and cost a lot more when spread out over decades. Cash from the day-to-day budget would compete with police, fire, library hours and other regular government services.

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Storm Drains: The City's Next Big Financial Drain - Voice of San Diego

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In the next five years, the city of San Diego will have to increase its spending on stormwater projects an average of $164 million annually, more than it costs to run its park and library systems combined. To help pay for this, the city could increase homeowners' monthly stormwater fees by more than 1,000 percent, though any increase would require a public vote.

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Questions (and answers) to what will happen if there are taxes for StormWater

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Questions (and answers) to what will happen if there are taxes for StormWater

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Molly Blume

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Los Angeles County captures only about one-fifth of its rainfall to store underground for later use. The rest is lost to the ocean. County officials want to raise more than $300 million dollars a year to collect more of that stormwater. And they hope to get that money from property owners in the form of a new tax.

The county board of supervisors called on its Public Works Department a year ago to come up with a means of funding extensive new stormwater capture projects. The efforts may be small, like collecting water from street medians or installing permeable pavement on a public parking lot. They could also be large construction projects, like building a network of water storage catacombs under local parks.

The county has long collected a tax on property to fund its Flood Control District, but it has no dedicated source of funding for stormwater capture, said Public Works Director Mark Pestrella. A draft of the proposal calls for charging landowners 2.5 to 3.5 cents per square foot of property that is impermeable and can't absorb rainfall or storm runoff.

The proposal is expected to go before the board of supervisors June 26 for a vote that could place it on the county's November ballot. It would take a two-thirds vote to pass.

Los Angeles County already has a property tax, how would this be different?

The main county property tax is levied on the assessed value of a parcel, and the terms of Proposition 13 limit how much it can go up each year. But your L.A. County property tax bill is the place where you pay several other taxes that voters have approved over the years. This stormwater capture tax, which Pestrella calls the Clean Safe Water Program, would be one more such tax.

It would be calculated on the amount of square footage in the parcel that rain does not soak into. So driveways, paved patio and roofs would be taxed at the amount the supervisors decide on. The county would calculate the impermeable square footage of a parcel using an advanced form of radar called Lidar.

Property owners could reduce the tax they pay by converting impermeable surfaces to permeable ones. Tearing out an asphalt driveway and replacing it with grass or some surface that allows water to soak into the ground.

The measure may also incorporate a system of incentives or rebates to reward landowners who do more to keep rainwater from moving off their property, Pestrella said.

How much would the tax raise and for how long?

That depends on the rate the supervisors decide to request in the tax ballot measure, but the plan is to raise somewhere between $300 and $400 million for the county's Flood Control District via the parcel tax.

The tax, as written, would be permanent, but the supervisors could choose to insert an end date, say, in 30 or so years.

What might be the economic impact of such a tax?

Our current groundwater supply makes up about one-third of the water used in the county. An aggressive program of building stormwater capture projects could reduce the region's dependence on costly imported water.

Proponents of the tax say the money could enable the region to survive droughts better, reduce pollution from storm runoff and create thousands of new jobs.

Jobs are one reason the advocacy group Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy endorses the measure. Executive Director Roxana Tynan says projects to capture groundwater could replace large paved areas with new public green space.

"That is something that our communities in Northeast L.A., and East and South Los Angeles are in desperate need of," Tynan said.

However, businesses that have large building footprints and paved parking lots may end up paying more of the tax.

Los Angeles County doesn't have vast tracts of land to develop for rainwater capture, but it does have many hard, impermeable surfaces that could be altered to direct water underground. Those places include parking lots, school yards, parks and street medians.

The money raised through a parcel tax to capture stormwater could provide other benefits. Some of the projects double as parks, scenic wetlands and wildlife habitats. They can also make schools greener as percolation fields replace asphalt.

Capturing rainfall close to where it lands can also reduce the amount of pollution in local waterways and the ocean.

Some parts of the county are already investing in stormwater capture, including in the cities of Santa Monica and Santa Clarita. So an element of the plan that would provide incentives or rebates to those areas is also under consideration by the tax drafting team.

Cities would get 40 percent of the tax collected within their boundaries to spend on projects that meet the goals of the tax.
This story is part of Elemental: Covering Sustainability, a new multimedia collaboration between Cronkite News, Arizona PBS, KJZZ, KPCC, Rocky Mountain PBS and PBS SoCal.

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LA landowners face potential new property tax for rain capture

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Los Angeles County captures only about one-fifth of its rainfall to store underground for later use. The rest is lost to the ocean. County officials want to raise more than $300 million dollars a year to collect more of that stormwater. And they hope to get that money from property owners in the form of a new tax.

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Drainage Nets Keep Water Pollution At Bay In Australia

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Drainage Nets Keep Water Pollution At Bay In Australia

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Samantha

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View Slideshow

Water pollution is a growing crisis around the world, but one city in Australia is doing its part to tackle the huge surges of waste that come from stormwater drains. By using a somewhat obvious, simple and cost-effective system of nets, or "trash traps," the City of Kwinana is moving to prevent waste from entering its waters.

In Spring 2018, the City of Kwinana collaborated with supplier Ecosol to install two drainage nets in the Henley Reserve. The netting was simply attached to concrete drain pipes, and these nets have since collected 370 kg (about 816 lb) of waste, including plastic food wrappers and bottles.
Related: Former businessman bicycles down the Thames River to stop plastic pollution
The system, including manufacturing, installation and additional labor, cost the municipality about $20,000 - prior to the nets, city workers would collect debris in the water by hand. The new system is picked up and cleaned out using cranes when the nets become full of waste. Then, the waste is sorted in a designated facility. Here, green waste is transformed into mulch, and other materials are separated into recyclable/non-recyclable.

The City of Kwinana has considered the drainage nets a huge success, with plans to install three more nets in the nature reserve area over the next two years.

"We know that the Kwinana community is very passionate about environmental initiatives and rallies around actions with positive environmental impact, and if it was not for the drainage nets, 370 kg of debris would have ended up in our reserve," Mayor Carol Adams said. "The nets are placed on the outlet of two drainage pipes, which are located between residential areas and natural areas ... This ensures that the habitat of the local wildlife is protected and minimizes the risk of wildlife being caught in the nets. To date, no wildlife has been caught up in either of the City's nets."

The system took off on social media, in a viral storm that Adams said shows the importance for all levels of government to focus on initiatives to save the environment.
Image via Shutterstock

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Cheap drainage nets keep water pollution at bay in Australia

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View Slideshow Water pollution is a growing crisis around the world, but one city in Australia is doing its part to tackle the huge surges of waste that come from stormwater drains. By using a somewhat obvious, simple and cost-effective system of nets, or "trash traps," the City of Kwinana is moving to prevent waste from entering its waters.

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San Diego gets fined for 4.6 million dollars for allowing private construction sites to pollute waterways

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San Diego gets fined for 4.6 million dollars for allowing private construction sites to pollute waterways

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Ronald Jair Chavez

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Local water quality officials proposed on Tuesday fining San Diego $4.6 million for allegedly allowing private construction sites to pollute sensitive waterways, including the Los Peñasquitos Lagoon.

Over a period of nearly five years, city officials failed to conduct proper site inspections, prevent harmful sediment erosion and enforce the city's water quality ordinances at multiple sites, according to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Erosion from construction sites can send sediment downstream to creeks and lagoons, where it can transport toxic pollutants, clog natural drainage systems and smother habitat, according to a six-page complaint issued by the board.

A city spokesman said officials were reviewing the complaint on Tuesday and examining ways to address the board's concerns in a manner that would provide greater environmental benefits to communities in San Diego.

The city could pay the penalty, contest it or propose a settlement that may include a supplemental environmental project. The board has scheduled a hearing for Oct. 12.

The complaint blames the violations partly on poorly trained city inspectors, and calls the violations surprising because the regulations have been in place for more than 20 years.

"The water board expects the city's commitment to water quality ordinances to be embraced more broadly by all city staff - not just the planners who wrote them," said James Smith, the board's assistant executive officer and leader of the prosecution team.

The complaint says the maximum fine for the violations, which also affected the Tijuana River Estuary in the South Bay, would have been $22.7 million. The $4.6 million proposed was described as the city's "minimum liability."

The alleged violations took place between October 2010 and May 2015.

The complaint says San Diego inspectors were either unable or unwilling to take the enforcement actions against construction sites that are spelled out in city ordinances.

It says city officials and the water board jointly crafted plans to address sediment problems affecting salt marsh habitat in the Los Penasquitos Lagoon, noting that the partnership prompted the board to take a flexible approach.

"The San Diego water board put a lot of resources into collaborative, outcome-focused efforts to protect and restore areas like Los Peñasquitos Lagoon and Tijuana River Estuary," Smith said. "Enforcement like this is the result of a major deviation from the expectations we had for those partnerships."

The complaint says an investigation by the board found city officials were allowing construction sites within the lagoon's watershed to skirt erosion control requirements, leading to multiple instances of sediment pollution that could have easily been prevented.

San Diego Coastkeeper, a nonprofit group focused on local water quality, said it was disappointing to see such violations.

"It's unfortunate that we still have municipalities failing to implement even the minimum measures necessary to achieve clean water when we know that stormwater pollution is one of the biggest threats to our water quality," said Matt O'Malley, Coastkeeper's legal and policy director.

O'Malley praised the board for its vigilance.

"We are pleased to see the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board working so diligently to protect the waters of San Diego," he said.

The proposed fine is based on a formula of $10,000 per day, plus $10 for every gallon of pollutant discharge above 1,000 that does not get cleaned up. The formula also adds on 10 percent as a punitive deterrent.

Fine money goes into a statewide account for clean-up and abatement projects, but up to half could be set aside for local projects if the city and the board reach a settlement, a board spokeswoman said.

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San Diego facing $4.6M water pollution fine

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Local water quality officials proposed on Tuesday fining San Diego $4.6 million for allegedly allowing private construction sites to pollute sensitive waterways, including the Los Peñasquitos Lagoon. Over a period of nearly five years, city officials failed to conduct proper site inspections, prevent harmful sediment erosion and enforce the city's water quality ordinances at multiple sites, according to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.

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Copy of San Diego city budget, shows under funding for storm drains 

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Copy of San Diego city budget, shows under funding for storm drains 

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Mia Aust

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Only Rain Down The Drain in San Francisco

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Only Rain Down The Drain in San Francisco

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Talks about how San Francisco is doing a thing called adopt a drain.
Kristina Cotta

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San Francisco Public Utilities Commission : Only Rain Down the Drain

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Water quality at Southern California beaches is improving, according to Heal The Bay. The environmental nonprofit released its 2016 Beach Report Card on Thursday, giving A to F scores to 456 beaches up and down the California coast.

One thing that actually helps beach pollution: the drought. Less rain means less runoff, which means less pollution, Heal The Bay beach water quality scientist Leslie Griffin told KPCC. Nearly 40 percent of beaches get an F grade during wet weather.

There's another way that drought helps, Griffin told KPCC: It has made people more aware of how they use water, especially around their house, so they are less likely to waste water and allow it to flow down storm drains.

"People have been better about conserving water when it comes to overwatering their lawns or washing their cars in their driveways," Griffin told KPCC.

The report also includes Heal The Bay's "Beach Bummer List," ranking the 10 most polluted beaches in the state. That list includes the Santa Monica Pier, which came in fifth place, which the organization notes is the new destination for thousands of beachgoers each weekend thanks to the Expo Line extension. Still, they note that a new wet-weather storm drain inversion project may help improve water quality.

Other spots called out in a press release from L.A. County and Orange County include:

Mother's Beach in Marina Del Rey: The organization says mothers may love the lack of waves at this enclosed beach, but that the lack of circulation in the water effectively makes the water there a Petri dish - it ranked sixth on the most polluted list

Redondo Pier: Discharges from the Hyperion sewage treatment plant may have contributed to this beach's ranking, according to Heal The Bay. The beach, 100 yards south of the pier, came in seventh

Monarch Beach in Dana Point: This beach services a nearby Ritz Carlton. "Zero star beach for Five-Star Luxury Resort," Heal The Bay's statement reads. The Orange County beach came in fourth place and is near one of the county's best surf spots; the organization notes that runoff that enters via Salt Creek is treated in an on-site ozone treatment facility, but that bacterial issues persist, so they recommend swimming at least 100 yards away from Salt Creek - this is the Orange County beach's first time on the list, Griffin told KPCC

L.A. County leads California in the number of beaches with poor water quality, according to Heal The Bay. They say that 22 beaches statewide received grades of C or lower during the summer - and that swimming at one of these beaches greatly increases the risk of contracting diseases like stomach flu, ear infections, upper respiratory infections and rashes.

"A day at the beach shouldn't make anyone sick," Griffin said in a release.

A UCLA study said that the public health cost of gastrointestinal illnesses caused by using polluted ocean water for recreation is at least $21 million each year in L.A. and Orange counties.

It's not all bad news, though - several L.A. beaches scored A+ grades, making the Heal The Bay "Honor Roll," out of the 88 L.A. County beaches graded by the organization. To make that list, beaches have to be found free of high levels of bacteria throughout the year, during wet or dry weather, Griffin told KPCC.

Also, 92 percent of L.A. County's beaches received either an A or B grade for the summer rating period (recorded between April and October 2015). Orange County had 12 beaches on the "honor roll." Ventura County had three.

L.A. County beaches that made the "honor roll" include three from Rancho Palos Verdes. They are:

El Matador State Beach at Encinal Canyon

Escondido State Beach just east of Escondido Creek

Long Point in Rancho Palos Verdes

Abalone Cove Shoreline Park in Rancho Palos Verdes

Portuguese Bend Cove in Rancho Palos Verdes

Those beaches aren't among the county's most popular, which may contribute to helping them stay so clean.

"These beaches are beaches that don't have large storm drains pumping polluted water into their area, so they're a little bit more protected, and because of that, they don't have as many sources of pollution, and they tend to keep clean water quality throughout the year," Griffin told KPCC.

Orange County ranked better than L.A. County: 94 percent of the 114 beaches monitored by the organization scored A grades - that's 3 percent better than its five-year summer average. Ventura County showed some of the best water quality in the state, with perfect A grades at all 40 of the beaches the organization monitors for a third straight year.

Heal The Bay also said that California's overall water quality during the summer was excellent, with 95 percent of the 456 beaches it monitors receiving either A or B grades, which is on par with last year.

Heal the Bay advises swimmers to stay at least 100 yards away from flowing storm drains and piers. They advise to avoid enclosed beaches and creek mouths. They also suggest that swimmers wait at least three days after rain before entering the ocean.

You can also check out BeachReportCard.org to get the latest grades for any California beach, with nearly 600 beaches updated weekly - every Friday. Griffin said that A water is great, so you won't get sick from that water.

The organization said in a press release that it's expanding a pilot program to predict water quality, working with UCLA and Stanford researchers. They say they will be publishing predictive grades for Santa Monica and Long Beach based on statistical models.

Heal The Bay is advocating for public funding to build projects to capture, cleanse and reuse runoff instead of having it flow out to the ocean.

"The adage of 'reduce, reuse and recycle' applies completely to water. It's not just for solid waste. We really urge everyone to use every drop of water twice. I mean, capture your rain, use that to water your gardens, don't overwater your lawn, don't water your lawn in the middle of the day too - that's a giant waste. Really make sure that when you're using water, you're using it effectively and wisely," Griffin said.

Griffin also made a plea that dog owners pick up after their pets.

"If you leave anything behind, that's going to make its way down the watershed and out to the ocean the next time you go swimming," Griffin said.

Read the full report here:
Heal The Bay Beach Report Card

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LA County still has 3 of California's most polluted beaches

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Water quality at Southern California beaches is improving, according to Heal The Bay. The environmental nonprofit released its 2016 Beach Report Card on Thursday, giving A to F scores to 456 beaches up and down the California coast. One thing that actually helps beach pollution: the drought.

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karla
- talks about some ways to get to the point where we can keep it under control.

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Learn about stormwater runoff and the solutions. Stormwater runoff can be a big problem, but there are ways to take care of it that can put you ahead of the game and that are cost-effective.

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Solution Proposed For City's Poor Drainage 

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Solution Proposed For City's Poor Drainage 

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Jake Palid

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PORTLAND - After nearly two decades, city engineers feel they've hit on a good solution to the problem of combined sewer overflows, which is what happens when big storms overwhelm the city's wastewater system.

The city has been operating under a consent agreement with the Department of Environmental Protection since 1991, when federal regulators ordered Portland to fix a system that allowed raw sewage to flush into Casco Bay, Portland Harbor, Back Cove and streams and rivers around the city when heavy rain exceeded the capacity of sewers.

The problem was that the city's storm and sanitary systems were integrated: Water running off the streets would be routed into regular sewer lines and then would flow to the city's wastewater treatment plant on the Eastern Promenade to be filtered, cleaned and discharged.

If the combined flow became too heavy - during a prolonged, heavy rain, for instance - several relief points in the system allowed untreated water to flow into nearby bodies of water.

The city's initial agreement with the DEP called for those systems to be separated, so that storm water flowed in its own pipes and was kept separate from sanitary sewers.

But heavy rain that was too much for the storm sewers could still wash into nearby bodies of water, said Kathi Earley, the city's engineer, and that runoff also carried some undesirable material with it - road salt, gas, oil and garbage, for example.

The new approach, Earley said, is to expand the capacity of the sewer system through the use of what she calls "storage conduits" - large concrete sections that will greatly increase the amount of water and waste the system can hold.

Earley said the storage conduits would essentially be able to hold the first inch of rain along with normal amounts of sanitary sewage and feed it to the wastewater treatment plant, preventing at least some of the overflows.

Portland gets an average of about 60 significant rainfalls each year, Earley said. About 15 of those dump more than an inch of water, so the new system should immediately cut overflows by 75 percent.

Even more important, "it would capture the first flush," she said - from the roads, not homes and businesses - which tends to contain more of the pollutants such as salt and oil that engineers would like to keep from washing into the water.

Economically, the solution is cheaper than creating separate storm sewers, easing the bite of rising sewer rates, although they are still expected to triple, from about $425 a year currently to about $1,200 annually, in the next 25 years.

Separating storm water and sanitary pipes was expected to cost about $525 million, spread out from the time the consent decree was signed to when the overall project was expected to be completed in 2040. The new approach, Earley said, will cost about $180 million over that period.

Earley said the city has access to a revolving state loan fund, financed by bonds, to draw on to finance the first phase, in which 4,000 feet of the storage conduits will be installed under Baxter Boulevard around the Back Cove. Assuming the project stays on schedule, she said, that work could get started in late 2011 or early 2012.

There are also some other pieces to the new approach, Earley said, including continuing to separate storm and sewer pipes in some areas where the storage conduits aren't feasible and using some green approaches, such as landscaping to allow more water to be soaked up by the ground, and porous road surfaces that minimize runoff, an approach that results in less water going into storm sewers.

The Portland City Council was briefed on the approach last month and will be asked today to pass a resolution to endorse the plan, a move that will allow the city to go to the Maine DEP for approval. The federal DEP several years ago transferred oversight of the consent agreement to the state agency.

Portland Mayor Nicholos Mavadones said he doesn't know of any opposition to the proposal on the council and said most questions were probably answered in a November workshop run by Earley.

"This would save some money and perhaps be a better alternative," he said. "The concept seems to make sense."

Staff Writer Edward D. Murphy can be contacted at 791-6465 or at:
[email protected]

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Solution proposed for city's poor drainage

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PORTLAND - After nearly two decades, city engineers feel they've hit on a good solution to the problem of combined sewer overflows, which is what happens when big storms overwhelm the city's wastewater system.

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17 Ways You Specifically Can Do to Prevent Stormwater Pollution

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17 Ways You Specifically Can Do to Prevent Stormwater Pollution

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Nate Corbett

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How Can YOU Prevent Stormwater Pollution? | Environment & Planning

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Polluted stormwater degrades our lakes, rivers, wetlands and other waterways. Nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen can cause the overgrowth of algae resulting in oxygen depletion in waterways. Toxic substances from motor vehicles and careless application of pesticides and fertilizers threaten water quality and can kill fish and other aquatic life.

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Fixing up streets and making more storm drains.

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What's the Big Deal?

Urban runoff is the single biggest threat to water quality in San Diego.

As we created cities and more people settled in our region, we paved over the "spongy" parts of watersheds. This means surfaces that previously allowed water to infiltrate became hard. This stops water from soaking into the ground or being used by plants. These impervious surfaces, like parking lots, roads and buildings, cause water to flow over the surface of a watershed. This surface flow, also known as stormwater or urban runoff, causes problems in our creeks, rivers and lagoons including increased pollution, faster and flashier flows and increased erosion.

Essentially, our human activities have disrupted how watersheds function.

During our long dry season, pollutants build on hard surfaces. When it rains, stormwater pushes the accumulated pollutants into our storm drains. In San Diego, like most of California, our storm drains generally do not connect to wastewater treatment plants, so everything flows untreated into our waters.

It does not take much pavement in a watershed to cause ecological harm- water quality and habitat impacts can start when as little as 10 percent of the watershed gets paved. This makes protecting and restoring water quality very challenging.

In addition to pollution from our cars, yards, and streets, contaminants flow into our storm drain system from industrial and construction areas, irrigation, the atmosphere and sewage spills. When not managed appropriately, industrial and construction sites can be significant sources of pollution.

Infrequent rain in San Diego allows pollutants to build on land, which leads to a dangerous "first flush" of pollutants into our waterways during the first rain after a long dry spell. But even during dry weather, we send pollutants from the land into the water. Every time a lawn is over watered into the streets or a carwash flows into the storm drain, pollutants move into our waters.

Urban runoff creates negative impacts such as:

Where does it come from?

Urban runoff is a result of pollution from the following areas:

Infrequent rain in San Diego allows pollutants to build on the land, which leads to a dangerous "first flush" of pollutants into our waters during the first rain after a long dry spell. But even during dry weather, we send pollutants from the land into the water. Mostly we do this by over-irrigating our landscape, but sometimes groundwater seeps can also carry pollutants into our surface water during dry weather.

Practice and share these tips to reduce how you negatively contribute to runoff pollution.

Residential Sources

Our homes and neighborhoods are a significant source of polluted urban runoff. Every time you spread your lawn fertilizer a bit too far outside of your lawn, every dog poop left behind, every time ant or roach pesticide gets blown from its intended target, a little bit of pollution gets added to the system. Multiply this by the three million residents we have in the county, and it all adds up.

Commercial Sources

Businesses also have a role to play in helping prevent urban runoff. Our commercial areas often have large parking lots that increase the amount of surface flow into our storm drains. Businesses like fast food restaurants and bars seem to attract trash and cigarette butts. Dirty mop water water poured into the storm drain is a source of nastiness in our rivers.

Agricultural Sources

You may not think of San Diego County as an agricultural powerhouse, but we have a huge amount of agriculture. San Diego County is the 12th-largest farm economy and has more small farms (less than 10 acres) than any other county. Local agriculture brings $5.1 billion annually into our economy. Farms, however, often contribute to nutrient pollution to our waters. San Diego Coastkeeper's water monitoring lab has shown that nitrates (a common form of nitrogen fertilizer) is a ubiquitous pollutant in our streams. Poor irrigation runoff management could explain much of that nitrate in our waters.

Industrial Sources

In San Diego County, our industrial areas often concentrate into small sections of town. Auto repair shops, shipbuilding, recycling centers and other industrial areas have the potential to contribute metals and oils into our stormwater system. These pollutants are especially serious because of their ability to be toxic in very low concentrations. Because of the seriousness of these pollutants, all stormwater in an industrial facility should be captured and treated on site.

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Sources of Runoff Pollution - San Diego Coastkeeper

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Urban runoff is the single biggest threat to water quality in San Diego. As we created cities and more people settled in our region, we paved over the "spongy" parts of watersheds. This means surfaces that previously allowed water to infiltrate became hard. This stops water from soaking into the ground or being used by plants.

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ways to reduce storm drain pollution starting in your yard

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ways to reduce storm drain pollution starting in your yard

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Mia Aust

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Lawns and gardens can be big sources of nutrient pollution. We can all do our part to make sure water running off our lawns doesn't carry nitrogen and phosphorus into rivers, lakes and streams.

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Michigan's Solutions to Stormwater Runoff

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Michigan's Solutions to Stormwater Runoff

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Jazmin Griffith

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Stormwater runoff is the single largest contributor of non-point source pollution to Michigan's waterways. While separating our sanitary sewers from storm sewers will do a great deal to protect our water from raw or partially treated sewage overflows, we have to pursue other policy options to deal with stormwater where it lands. Stormwater runs off of our driveways, lawns, parking lots, roofs, and other gray infrastructure. In most cases, this water then drains into combined pipes where it mixes with sewage before heading to a wastewater treatment plant. In some cities, like Grand Rapids, these stormwater and wastewater pipes have been separated. This separation eliminates combined sewage overflows. In both cases, the stormwater is carrying with it oils, anti-freeze, fertilizers, dog feces, and myriad other dangerous chemicals it comes in contact with. In both instances, when the system is working properly and not exceeding its capacity, the water goes first to wastewater treatment plants before then being discharged back into the water table.

During heavy rainfall events however, our sewers often exceed their intended flow capacity, and untreated stormwater, carrying all the same dangerous pollutants, gets deposited directly into lakes, rivers, and streams. The fertilizers carried by stormwater from suburban lawns is a huge problem. These fertilizers and nitrates contribute to the toxic algae blooms that pollute Lake Erie as well as many inland lakes in Michigan.

This problem is only getting worse as urban, suburban, and exurban areas continue to expand in population and square mileage. Many of these gray infrastructure systems are not being upgraded at the same rate, and end up allowing for overflows and discharges that are harmful to our local rivers and streams. Climate change contributes to the problem too as Michigan continues to see more frequent and more extreme weather events.

There is a simple way to solve this problem. The best way to treat stormwater is to treat it where it falls, as it falls. When green infrastructure is put in place, stormwater re-enters the water table without picking up harmful chemicals from nonporous surfaces. Native plants helps to act as a sponge, soaking up water where it falls. The water is then filtered naturally through roots and soil before then making its way back into aquifers. This is why raingardens, wetlands, bio-swales, porous pavement, and other green infrastructure upgrades go a long way toward solving this major water quality issue.

Most lawns, especially the popular and widely used Kentucky bluegrass, are invasive to Michigan (meaning it isn't native to our state). Unlike native plants which tend to have deeper roots and allow for much greater water infiltration during rainfall, Kentucky bluegrass and most other lawn species have shallow root structures that don't allow for much infiltration, meaning that rain does not infiltrate the ground well enough and ultimately runs off the lawn into sewers, carrying with it fertilizer and all the other pollutants it comes in contact with on the way.

Individual households can make a big difference by adding green infrastructure to their property. Some green infrastructure upgrades include things like: raingardens, rain barrels, and buffer strips. By utilizing native Michigan grasses and plants in your yard, you are helping to capture rain where it falls and keep it from polluting our local waterways. By capturing stormwater in rain barrels on your property, you save water (and money) as this water is easily reused to maintain your flowerbeds and vegetable gardens. For more information on easy green infrastructure upgrades you can make at home, check out this resource from EPA.

One way to implement green infrastructure on a larger scale is by allowing for municipalities to create stormwater utilities. A stormwater utility would charge property owners fees based on how much stormwater their property contributes to municipal stormwater systems. These fees would then be used by the municipal utility to make upgrades, invest in infrastructure and maintain existing systems. Those fees could be reduced or eliminated when a property owner installs green infrastructure that reduces or eliminates runoff from their property. This does two really positive things. First, it gives municipalities the funding necessary to deal with our expanding stormwater problem. Second, it creates incentive for property owners to be proactive in installing green infrastructure and eliminating runoff from their own properties.

To find out more about our work on stormwater issues, or to volunteer with us, click here.

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Stormwater runoff is the single largest contributor of non-point source pollution to Michigan's waterways. While separating our sanitary sewers from storm sewers will do a great deal to protect our water from raw or partially treated sewage overflows, we have to pursue other policy options to deal with stormwater where it lands.

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focus is on permitting, compliance, and other activities to reduce pollutants in  storm water runoff

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focus is on permitting, compliance, and other activities to reduce pollutants in  storm water runoff

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Grace

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san diego regional water quality control board

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Storm Water | San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board

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San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board

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Abby Ridgeway

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Oahu Storm Water Management Program (SWMP) Plan

The State of Hawaii Department of Transportation, Highways Division, Oahu District (DOT-HWYS) continues to implement its proactive comprehensive Storm Water Management Program (SWMP). This initiative is being taken to comply with our National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit for the Oahu municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4). The Oahu MS4 qualifies as a large municipal separate storm sewer system since it services a population greater than 250,000 and is therefore subject to permitting requirements under the NPDES Program for storm water discharges. The program is designed to reduce, to the maximum extent practicable, the amount of storm water containing pollutants from entering and ultimately discharging from the DOT-HWYS MS4 into the streams, rivers and ocean that we all enjoy.

In accordance with the requirements of the DOT-HWYS MS4 NPDES Permit No. HI S000001, Part D.1, the following SWMP Plan has been developed. The plan outlines the DOT-HWYS program to address storm water pollution associated with operating DOT-HWYS' related network and facilities on Oahu.

All files are available in Adobe PDF format. You may browse the table below and access each chapter individually or click the following button to download the entire plan (without appendices, 7.8 MB).

Download entire plan

Chapter

Title

Size

Plan

Appendices

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Hawaii Storm Water Management Program (SWMP) Plan

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Oahu Storm Water Management Program (SWMP) Plan The State of Hawaii Department of Transportation, Highways Division, Oahu District (DOT-HWYS) continues to implement its proactive comprehensive Storm Water Management Program (SWMP). This initiative is being taken to comply with our National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit for the Oahu municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4).

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Pollution warning issued for coastal waters of San Diego County

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Pollution warning issued for coastal waters of San Diego County

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karla
-  Elevated bacteria levels can persist after a rainstorm, depending on the intensity of a storm, the volume of runoff, and ocean and current conditions.

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SAN DIEGO - A general advisory for the coastal waters of San Diego County was issued Saturday by the Department of Environmental Health, warning against human contact because of runoff from recent and ongoing rainfall.

Swimmers, surfers and other ocean users were warned that levels of bacteria can rise significantly in ocean and bay waters, especially near storm drains, creeks, rivers and lagoon outlets that discharge urban runoff.

"Urban runoff may contain large amounts of bacteria from a variety of sources, such as animal waste, soil and decomposing vegetation," the advisory said. "While many coastal storm drains within San Diego County are permanently posted with white metal warning signs, additional temporary warning signs are not posted for general advisories."

Activities such as swimming, surfing and diving should be avoided in all coastal waters for 72 hours following rain. This includes all coastal beaches and all of Mission Bay and San Diego Bay, according to DEH.

Elevated bacteria levels can persist after a rainstorm, depending on the intensity of a storm, the volume of runoff, and ocean and current conditions.

A water contact closure remains in effect for Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge and Border Field Park because of sewage-contaminated flows from the Tijuana River entering the United States, according to DEH.

Signs will remain in place until sample results indicate the ocean water is safe for recreational use.

The DEH will continue to monitor water quality in Imperial Beach. The access road to Friendship Park, within Border Field State Park, may also be affected with sewage-affected runoff and should be avoided.

More information on the Tijuana River is available at the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, (619) 662-7600.

Updates on beach closure information can be found at http://www.sdbeachinfo.com or at the 24-hour hotline, (619) 338-2073.

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Pollution warning issued for coastal waters of San Diego County

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SAN DIEGO - A general advisory for the coastal waters of San Diego County was issued Saturday by the Department of Environmental Health, warning against human contact because of runoff from recent and ongoing rainfall.

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Portland, Oregon clean storm drain solutions

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Portland, Oregon clean storm drain solutions

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Jack Montesano

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The Storm Drain Maintenance Program provides inspections, cleaning and maintenance services to the city's storm drain conveyance system.

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The Storm Drain Maintenance Program provides inspections, cleaning and maintenance services to the city's storm drain conveyance system.

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Kristina Cotta

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The City of Chula Vista storm drain system consists of approximately 1.7 million feet of pipe, 1.6 million feet of storm channels, 19,000 access points and 150 other miscellaneous structures consisting of Continuous Deflective Separation (CDS) units, water quality basins and modular wetlands.

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Samantha

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Mayor Kevin Faulconer 's proposed budget prioritizes environmental initiatives such as San Diego's ambitious climate action and zero waste plans, but it would cut funding for habitat restoration, water pollution prevention and hiking trail construction.

City officials say the cuts fit with the mayor's focus on shrinking spending in some limited target areas so that the city can preserve money for higher priorities.
RELATED: Faulconer budget called solid compromise between cuts, neighborhoods
The mayor says some cuts are necessary because a spike in the city's pension payment has created a projected deficit of about $80 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

"We wanted to continue the long-term investments we're making to improve our local environment by moving forward with funding for the Pure Water recycling program and the Climate Action Plan," Faulconer said on Friday. "Many of the cuts we're looking at are eliminating vacant positions or scaling back on some contract work."

The Pure Water Program would reduce how much treated sewage the city sends into the ocean, the Climate Action Plan would sharply reduce carbon emissions, and the Zero Waste Plan would reduce the amount of trash produced locally to zero by increasing recycling.

The proposed $1.4 billion budget devotes many millions to those initiatives while making cuts to other environmental programs.

They include a $240,000 cut to water quality assessments that aim to keep pollutants out of creeks and other bodies of water that flow into the bay and ocean.

Faulconer is proposing an additional cut of $240,000 to pollutant testing in the city's extensive storm drain system, which will reduce the frequency of the tests.

And a third cut related to water pollution would be slashing money for education and outreach events to save $404,000.

The cuts would not put the city out of compliance with its permit from the Regional Water Quality Control Board for water pollution activity, said Drew Kleis, deputy director of the city's Transportation and Storm water Department.

Adhering to the permit is required under the federal Clean Water Act.

Kleis said on Friday that the cut in education and outreach spending, an 80 percent reduction, would shrink the number of radio and print ads the department buys to encourage the public not to put harmful things in storm drains, such as paint or runoff from washing a car.

Because such efforts are funded jointly by several local water agencies, Kleis said the sharp cut won't significantly damage the "Think Blue" education program.

In addition, Kleis said his staff will continue to visit local businesses to inspect and evaluate their water pollution efforts.

"Every one of those visits is another opportunity for education and outreach, so it's still a very robust program," said Kleis, noting that his staff targets its education efforts at businesses that appear to be the highest risk for pollution.

The cut to water pollution studies, a 9 percent reduction, wouldn't have a significant impact because the city and regional board recently finished an ambitious study of dissolved metals in Chollas Creek, Kleis said.

Because of that study, the budget for the fiscal year that ends June 30 was higher than the budget needs to be for the new fiscal year, he said.

"We still will be doing partner studies with the regional board," he said.

The cut to pollution testing in storm drains, a 6 percent reduction, would not make tests significantly less frequent because clean water in storm drains is crucial.

"Our storm drain system eventually drains into our local canyons and creeks and then our bays and the ocean," he said.

Kleis stressed that the city has sharply increased spending on water pollution and storm drains in recent years, partly because of new regulations and partly because city leaders have prioritized it.

"It's a pretty robust budget and the highest it's ever been," said Kleis, referring to the $60 million in annual spending Faulconer is proposing for the department.

The mayor's spending plan would also save $186,000 by cutting the budget for habitat restoration by 30 percent. The cut would mean less frequent removal of non-native plants, less aggressive maintenance and less restoration of native habitat.

In a related move, the budget would cut $80,000 for supplies and materials for open space trail construction, seed and plants for revegetation and interpretive materials for public education.

The budget would also save $600,000 by partly reversing a plan to eliminate a discount city trash trucks get in the "tipping" fees they pay to dump trash at the Miramar Landfill.

The Environmental Services Department has planned to slowly phase out the discount to raise revenue for ambitious projects, such as new recycling entryway proposed for the landfill.

But Mario Sierra, who heads the department, said on Friday that the lean budget projected for next year prompted city officials to slow the phasing out of the discount to create $600,000 in savings.

Sierra said the city still plans to move forward with issuing a request for proposals next fiscal year for the new recycling entryway, which would be called a "resource recovery facility" and cost roughly $8 million to $10 million.

The facility would help the city meet its zero waste goal by forcing residents to sort recyclables out of their trash before putting it in the landfill. Sierra said a study in 2013 found that 76 percent of waste put in the landfill could have been recycled.

The landfill is also unveiling on Monday a compressed natural gas station that will allow city trash trucks to switch away from diesel fuel, which is more expensive and creates more pollution.

That's part of city efforts to meet the goals of its climate action plan. They budget includes $128 million on various programs related to the plan, including creation of more bike lanes and installation of advanced water meters.

Much of the money would be $76 million to continue work on the Pure Water project, which would allow the city to recycle treated sewage into drinking water.

Another element of the climate action plan is more residents relying on solar power, and the city was recently ranked No. 1 in the nation for solar energy capacity because so many people have installed systems locally.

San Diego also recently increased electric vehicle charging ports in the city from 32 to 68 with financial help from the California Energy Commission.

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San Diego budget prioritizes environment, but makes minor cuts there

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Mayor Kevin Faulconer 's proposed budget prioritizes environmental initiatives such as San Diego's ambitious climate action and zero waste plans, but it would cut funding for habitat restoration, water pollution prevention and hiking trail construction. City officials say the cuts fit with the mayor's focus on shrinking spending in some limited target areas so that the city can preserve money for higher priorities.

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Urban Storm Water Drainage In Central Part of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Present State And Proposals for the improvements. 

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Urban Storm Water Drainage In Central Part of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Present State And Proposals for the improvements. 

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Jake Palid

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Urban Storm Water Drainage System in the Central Part of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia-Present State and Proposals for the Improvements | Global Solutions for Urban Drainage

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In Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, serious flooding occurs regularly. During the rainy seasons a larger part of the run-off is stored in the low-lying parts of the city around the Abiot square and the Addis Ababa stadium, blocking the traffic in this area.

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San Diego fails Stormwater test and faces millions in fines

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San Diego fails Stormwater test and faces millions in fines

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Ronald Jair Chavez

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The city of San Diego is on the hook for as much as $2.5 million in fines and upgrade costs for failing to properly enforce rules that require businesses and the city itself to make sure runoff is filtered before it drains into the ocean and the bay.

The city has until Nov. 1 to notify 142 private property owners that they must bring their stormwater management systems up to code.

If it misses the November deadline, the city could face daily fines of $10,000 a day. If the businesses fail to comply, each can be fined $100 a day up to $250,000.

These actions are detailed in a settlement reached last month between the city and the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, which is tasked with creating and enforcing water quality goals.

And the city assures it is taking the settlement seriously.

The city tried to make clear to the water board, starting during the settlement process, that it was committed to fixing the deficiencies that led to the enforcement action, said Bill Harris, the city's Transportation and Stormwater Department spokesman.

"In essence we were apologizing for the oversight and making sure that they knew we were committed to making the changes that we had to and taking care of the problem," Harris said. "But also moving forward, putting the systems in place that would help us avoid these problems in the future."

Stormwater system and permits

Before building anything in the city, developers have to apply for what's known as an MS4 permit. That's shorthand for a municipal separate storm sewer system permit. To get it, they have to show how stormwater will be collected and filtered in their new property. It's the city's responsibility to inspect construction sites to make sure developers are meeting those MS4 permit requirements.

Making sure those permits are in order from planning to completion is a responsibility shared among the city's Transportation and Stormwater, Public Works and Development Services departments.

The water board came down on the city after a routine inspection of local construction sites found deficiencies in the design and installation of some stormwater runoff treatment systems.

To get your head around stormwater management, think of those water drains you see on the side of curbs or drainage grates in parking lots. Those inlets take water from rain, overzealous lawn sprinkling and other runoff into a system independent from the sewage system. The water flows from countless drains throughout the city to collection rivers and eventually into the ocean and bays.

The city is required to make sure those drains and inlets remove trash and pollutants from stormwater before it makes its way to the ocean and bays.

Chris Means, an environmental scientist with the water board's Compliance Assurance Unit, said if the right stormwater management tools aren't in place, rain will mean trouble.

"Urban runoff can contain pollutants like sediment, which can clog the gills and make it hard for fish and other critters in the stream to breathe," Means said. Runoff also contains fertilizers, oils and heavy metals that foul local water.

San Diego Coastkeeper Program Director Travis Pritchard said polluted stormwater can make people sick. Advisories are often issued after it rains, warning swimmers to stay away from the ocean.

"The fecal indicator bacteria goes way up after a rain event. It's not coming from the rain, it's coming from everything that's being washed from inland out to the rivers," Pritchard said. "You talk to surfers, every single one of them has a story about, 'Oh, I was stupid, it rained yesterday I went surfing and now I have an ear infection,' or 'Now I have a sore throat' or 'gastrointestinal distress,' I guess would be the polite way of putting it."

The final settlement between the city and the water board lists several issues it believes contributed to the city's failures in enforcing the MS4 permit requirements. Those include sending out landscape inspectors to review stormwater requirements without the proper training.

"I think that there was a lack of adequate staffing," Means said. He said staff may have been too overwhelmed and under-trained to recognize inadequate stormwater systems.

Some owners didn't even know stormwater management systems were on their property, or how to take care of them. In response, the city made a fact sheet and FAQ and sent them out to those owners.

Those private properties include apartment buildings, churches and supermarkets. Even SeaWorld San Diego's Manta roller coaster and Rady Children's Hospital are on the city's list of properties that still aren't in compliance.

SeaWorld did not respond to an inewsource request for comment prior to publication. However, Monday, after this story published, SeaWorld's Communications Director David Koontz said in an email that the park complies with another permit, called a National Pollution Discharge Elimination Systems permit, "independent of, and separate from, the city's permit." A water board representative confirmed on Tuesday that SeaWorld is compliant with the NPDES permit.

The city began bringing some private developments into compliance with stormwater permit requirements after the first notice of violation. It wasn't enough for the water board.

"By December 2012, they kind of caught all the low-hanging fruit," Means said. "But they hadn't made any headway in addressing their own public projects."

Fines and punishment

The water board brought an enforcement action against the city in January 2013. That eventually led to the settlement approved last month.

Here's how the fines and upgrades break down: A $949,634 fine will be levied on the city. Of that amount, $492,734 will go to a state account for cleanup projects. The remaining $456,900 will be forgiven if the city completes an "enhanced compliance action."

That means the city must upgrade stormwater treatment systems in six San Diego parks, above what would otherwise be required. That project is estimated to cost almost $1.5 million and should be finished by August 2016.

Those projects boost stormwater quality, and keep some money from the fine in the region, said Livia Borak, an attorney with the Coast Law Group, which has experience in environmental issues.

The waived fine money will only cover about a third of the cost of the upgrades at the six parks. An additional $1.25 million will come from a bond approved by the San Diego City Council in March 2013.

The water board found 306 private properties and 13 city-owned capital improvement projects had missing or ineffective stormwater management technology. Some of the permits go back as far as May 2003. Of those, 142 private and eight public projects - including five of the parks set for extra upgrades - have yet to be fixed. The city has to bring all projects into compliance by Aug. 15, 2016, or face up to $10,000 a day in fines.

The city first must notify MS4 permit holders by Nov. 1 that they are in violation. The owners then have 60 days to get up to code - unless the modifications are large enough to require city design approval. If the owners fail to comply, they face a penalty of $100 a day for up to $250,000.

Search the map of non-compliant private and public development below. Red markers are private, green markers are public.

City improvement

The enforcement action taken by the water board focuses on completed projects. But in a separate audit in July, the board also found deficiencies in how the city enforces stormwater treatment requirements in projects under construction.

The audit said the city's "construction management program structure, responsibilities, and staffing are inadequate" to implement the stormwater treatment requirements. It also called the city's "inspection and enforcement processes ... ineffective." It listed 16 stormwater, construction and runoff management provisions that the city had violated.

Overall, Means at the water board says he thinks city officials have "done a lot to improve their program and their oversight of the projects. They've hired more people and engineers to review the plans and to make sure that they are inspected and operating when the project's finished."

Harris, the Transportation and Stormwater Department spokesman, said the city has a clear mandate from the mayor's office to do whatever it takes to prevent stormwater pollution. The city is bringing on two engineers that will focus on private developments, reviewing projects and training staff on stormwater management systems.

This isn't a problem unique to San Diego, Harris said. Regional water quality boards throughout the state are "paying a lot more attention to enforcement activities like this."

San Diego Coastkeeper's legal and policy director, Matt O'Malley, is also keeping a closer eye on stormwater systems after the enforcement action here.

"We may start looking at those other jurisdictions and see if this is going on because it kind of tipped us off to, wow, there are some things missing here," O'Malley said. "Something's broken and needs to be fixed."
Update 22/09/2014: This story has been updated to add SeaWorld's comment
We'll let you know when big things happen.
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San Diego fails stormwater test, agrees to millions in fines and upgrades - San Diego news from inewsource

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The city of San Diego is on the hook for as much as $2.5 million in fines and upgrade costs for failing to properly enforce rules that require businesses and the city itself to make sure runoff is filtered before it drains into the ocean and the bay.

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Andrew Ferguson
-Landscape designs to reduce flooding
-Home water management and reuse

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Stormwater is the water draining off a site from the rain that falls on the roof and land, and everything it carries with it. The soil, organic matter, litter, fertilisers from gardens and oil residues from driveways it carries can pollute downstream waterways.

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Jack Montesano

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Greywater is wash-water. Greywater includes lavatory sinks, showers, baths and laundry. Kitchen sinks and toilets are excluded. Greywater is a wonderful source of irrigation water as long as it is released a minimum of 2" below mulch or soil as per the California Plumbing Code.

Greywater Systems Design & Installation

Our greywater systems include consulting, permitting, design, installation and maintenance.

We have extensive experience installing retro-fit greywater systems for existing homes with upstairs fixtures or accessible crawlspaces. We also work with commercial customers, and we will help you choose the best greywater system for your needs.

New construction offers the opportunity to install larger and more integrated whole-house systems with water savings of up to 60,000 gallons per year!

We always start with simple gravity fed systems, but we also are experts at designing and installing zoned pressurized drip systems that work best with complex irrigation and landscape demands.

Contact our team today to schedule a design consultation to create your own recycled greywater system!

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Greywater Systems Design & Install San Diego

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Greywater is wash-water. Greywater includes lavatory sinks, showers, baths and laundry. Kitchen sinks and toilets are excluded. Greywater is a wonderful source of irrigation water as long as it is released a minimum of 2" below mulch or soil as per the California Plumbing Code. Our greywater systems include consulting, permitting, design, installation and maintenance.

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Tijuana's Toxic Waters people crowding near the estuary and trash is going into water

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Tijuana's Toxic Waters people crowding near the estuary and trash is going into water

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Scott Billitti

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NOTES 1. Julie Light, "Engendering Change: The Long, Slow Road to Organizing Women Maquiladora Workers," Corporate Watch, at: . 2. Author's Interview, Planning Director Carlos Graisbord, August 1999. 3. Diane Lindquist, "Peso's Loss, Plant's Gain: Maquiladoras Up Profit Potential, While Workers' Income Drops," San Diego Union-Tribune, February 14, 1995. 4.

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Las Vegas Plans $11.16m drains will be a part of a larger system that captures rainfall and brings it underground to Lake Mead in an effort to mitigate flooding. 

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Las Vegas Plans $11.16m drains will be a part of a larger system that captures rainfall and brings it underground to Lake Mead in an effort to mitigate flooding. 

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Las Vegas Plans $11.16 Million Storm Drain Project

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The Las Vegas Flood Control District announced plans to build an $11.16 million storm drain in North Las Vegas. The drains will be a part of a larger system that captures rainfall and brings it underground to Lake Mead in an effort to mitigate flooding.

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How storm water captures can provide solutions for Los Angeles pollution crisis.

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How storm water captures can provide solutions for Los Angeles pollution crisis.

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With some much-needed rain pelting the region, we pause to share some quick answers to commonly asked questions about rain and pollution. The storm will surely create a lot of waste-both in the form of trash on the beach and squandered opportunities to capture water in a time of drought.
I thought rain was a good thing. Why is Heal the Bay worried about it?

Yes, we desperately need rain in our drought-parched state. But rain creates urban runoff-the No. 1 source of pollution at our beaches and ocean.

How does rain create pollution?

Rimmed by foothills and mountains, Los Angeles County is like a giant concrete bowl tilted toward the sea. When it rains, water rushes along paved streets, picking up trash, fertilizer, metals, pet waste and automotive fluids before heading to the ocean via the region's extensive stormdrain system.

Were stormdrains designed to trash the beach?

With memories of historical deluges on their minds, engineers designed L.A. County's 2,800-mile stormdrain system in the '30s and '40s to prevent flooding first and foremost. Moving stormwater out to sea quickly was their top priority. But it also has the unintended function of moving trash and bacteria-laden runoff directly into the Santa Monica and San Pedro Bays, completely unchecked and untreated.

What is the economic impact of all that pollution?

People make nearly 50 million visits to Santa Monica Bay beaches each year. And the coastal economy in Los Angeles County generates more than $20 billion in goods and services each year. Polluted water and debris-laden beaches put these economic drivers at risk.

How much runoff results from a big rain?

An average one-inch storm will create about 10 billion gallons of runoff in L.A. County stormdrains. That's 120 Rose Bowls' worth of dirty water.

What is "stormwater capture" and why is Heal the Bay so excited about it?

The L.A. region now imports more than 80% of our water from Northern California and the Colorado River watershed, using enormous amounts of energy and capital to do so. In an era of permanent drought, we simply must do a better job of using the water we already have. We need to build innovative infrastructure projects that capture and reuse stormwater instead of sending it to senselessly pollute our seas. Runoff-if held, filtered and cleansed naturally in groundwater basins-can provide a safe source of water for human use.

What is the potential for reusing stormwater? How much water are we talking about?

A recent NRDC report found that capturing stormwater runoff for water supply across urban areas in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area could increase local water supplies by between 420,000 and 630,000 acre-feet per year, or roughly the same amount of water used by the entire City of Los Angeles on an annual basis.

What are examples of stormwater capture?

On a bigger scale, municipalities can develop multi-benefit wetlands, parks and open spaces that can capture and recharge groundwater supplies. Reclaimed stormwater can irrigate neighborhood parks, ball fields and school grounds instead of fouling rivers and beaches. On the individual lot level, property owners can equip homes with rain barrels and cisterns and redirect gutter flows into planter boxes. Under the County's new stormwater regulations, new and redevelopment projects throughout the region are now required to retain the first ¾" of precipitation that fall on properties, instead of allowing it to run off into streets and ultimately the sea.

What does all this runoff to do the ocean and the animals that call it home?

Tens of thousands of marine animals die each year from ingesting trash or getting entangled in manmade debris. Seawater laden with chemicals and metals makes it harder for local marine life to thrive and reproduce.

What about the human health impacts?

Beachgoers who come in contact with polluted water face a much higher risk of contracting illnesses such as stomach flu, ear infections, upper respiratory infections and skin rashes. A UCLA epidemiology study found that swimmers are twice as likely to get sick from swimming in front of a flowing storm drain than from swimming in open water.

How can ocean lovers stay safe after a storm?

Wait at least 72 hours before entering the water. Five days may be more appropriate at beaches near storm drains.

Stay at least 100 yards away from storm drains, piers and enclosed beaches with poor circulation.

Go to Heal the Bay's Beach Report Card to get the latest water quality grades and updates.

What can I do in my daily life to reduce the impact of runoff-related pollution?

Say NO to "convenience trash." By purchasing fewer disposable goods, you'll decrease the amount of plastic packaging and food wrappers that end up in the ocean. You'll also save money!

Dispose of trash properly. Keeping trash out of the street keeps trash out of the sea. Cigarette butts, fast food packaging and plastic bottles are the most frequently found items at our beach cleanups. And remember to pick up after your pet to keep bacteria out of our sea.

Rip up your lawn. Nearly half of our water is used to care for our lawns. Not only is it a waste of water in an arid climate, it contributes to poor water quality due to pesticide and fertilizer runoff.

Keep rainwater onsite. Many cities offer rebates to homeowners who install rain barrels or cisterns, which capture and infiltrate rainfall for later use around the home and garden.

How can I support Heal the Bay's efforts to make L.A. smarter about stormwater?

Come to a volunteer beach cleanup to spruce up a beach near you. Invite family and friends and win prizes!

Follow us on social media to learn about our work and share information with your networks.

Become a member. Your donation will underwrite volunteer cleanups, citizen science programs and lobbying and advocacy efforts by our science and policy team to develop more sustainable water policies throughout Southern California.

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Storm FAQ: Rain Both a Blessing and Curse - Heal the Bay

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With some much-needed rain pelting the region, we pause to share some quick answers to commonly asked questions about rain and pollution. The storm will surely create a lot of waste-both in the form of trash on the beach and ... Read More "

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Adrian

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Storm Drain Maintenance Costs In San Diego

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Storm Drain Maintenance Costs In San Diego

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Nate Corbett

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Drains

The City of San Diego has over 75,000 storm drain structures and 889 miles of drainage pipe. The Storm Water Department is responsible for inspection, maintenance and repair of the storm drain system in the public right-of-way and in drainage easements. This includes clearing blocked drains, removing debris from storm drain structures, and cleaning and repairing damaged drainpipes.

Storm drains are designed to handle normal water flow, but occasionally during heavy rain, flooding will occur. Our goal is to limit the number of flooding incidents by keeping the drains clear with regular maintenance and cleaning.

Click the link below to see an example of one neighborhood and its storm drain system. The City's storm water responsibilities extend from the international border to the San Pasquale Valley.

Fences

The Storm Water Department maintains over 100 miles of fencing. The fencing serves a variety of purposes. Most of the fencing surrounds storm drain channels and drainage structures. This serves the dual purpose of providing public safety and keeping excess debris out of the channels. Fences are checked at the start of the rainy season, as well as during and after the rains. Street Division also maintains fences in storm drain channels which function as a strainer to keep debris from flowing down the channel. They are inspected and cleaned regularly during the rainy season. We also maintain fences along roadways. These fences are installed for the purpose of public safety and are designed to keep pedestrians from crossing at hazardous locations.

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Drains The City of San Diego has over 75,000 storm drain structures and 889 miles of drainage pipe. The Storm Water Department is responsible for inspection, maintenance and repair of the storm drain system in the public right-of-way and in drainage easements.

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Surfers, houses, and the ocean are affected by untreated water. 

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Surfers, houses, and the ocean are affected by untreated water. 

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Molly Blume

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Untreated wastewater flows from Tijuana, Mexico, into the Pacific Ocean near the California border. Sasha Khokha of NPR station KQED says the U.S. government is expected to endorse a much-debated treatment plant.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, host:

Millions of gallons of untreated waste pollute the coastal waters off the Mexico-California border each year. So far, no one has hit on an idea that will completely solve the problem, but the federal government is expected to officially endorse one plan today. Sasha Khokha of member station KQED reports.

SASHA KHOKHA reporting:

Imperial Beach in San Diego is famous among surfers for its powerful waves. It's the southernmost town on the California coast, just above the border. Serge Tedina(ph) surfs here almost every day. But sometimes, he says, he finds himself paddling in water that makes him want to head right back to shore.

Mr. SERGE TEDINA (Surfer): And sometimes you go in the water and you find yourself in this brown sort of oily, sickly sort of smelling sweet water, and you get really grossed out. Like all of a sudden, you feel like you fell in a sort of pit of toxic waste.

KHOKHA: Surfers are often the first to experience the health effects from dirty water. Last year, San Diego had to close various beaches along this coastline for over 200 days because of contamination. The sewage at Imperial Beach comes from Tijuana, less than two miles away. More than a million and a half people no live in Tijuana, and the city is adding another hundred thousand residents each year.

(Soundbite of traffic)

KHOKHA: On the edge of Tijuana, just four miles south of the border, hundreds of new residents have built makeshift shacks near the top of a steep gulch known as Goat Canyon.

(Soundbite of children playing)

KHOKHA: They're not hooked up to the city's water system. Resident Alma Diaz Sandoval(ph) says her 14-year-old has suffered chronic skin infections from the lack of sanitation.

Ms. ALMA DIAZ SANDOVAL (Tijuana Resident): (Through Translator) There are many houses that don't have latrines. They take care of their business in plastic bags and then they throw them, and then when it rains, the water takes it all downhill.

KHOKHA: When it rains, dirty water from this canyon rushes down the hillside and under the metal border fence.

(Soundbite of running water)

KHOKHA: The US government has set up receptacles to try to catch the runoff and treat it, but during heavy rains the containers overflow. Eventually, the dirty water finds its way to the sea. The US government also runs a treatment plant just across the border in San Diego dedicated entirely to helping Mexico process about 25 million gallons of sewage a day. The partially treated waste is piped out three miles into the Pacific Ocean, but the sewage flowing through that pipe is still so dirty that the state of California successfully sued the federal government for violating the Clean Water Act. And there's a deadline. They have to clean up the water by 2008.

So now the US is poised, with private investors to ease the way, to build a new water treatment facility to treat the sewage. Here's the idea: Some of the water from Tijuana would continue to be piped over the border to the US treatment plant, as it is now. Then it would be pumped be back uphill and run through a second treatment plant in Mexico. Finally, the wastewater would make yet another border crossing to the San Diego pipeline, where it would be pumped out into the ocean, cleaner than it is now.

(Soundbite of sea birds)

Ms. LORI SALDANA(ph) (California State Assembly): The last thing you want to do is pump water, especially sewage, any farther than you have to.

KHOKHA: California Assembly member Lori Saldana is just one of many who says the project, known as Bahagua(ph), doesn't make sense. She's standing on the bluff overlooking the metal border fence that juts out to sea.

Ms. SALDANA: It contributes to energy costs; it contributes to breaks in pipelines and sewage spills.

KHOKHA: But the main proponent of the new plant, Congressman Bob Filner, says his plan is the only one that meets the deadline.

Representative BOB FILNER (Democrat, California): I thought that was a win, win, win situation. We could get the sewage problem solved. The facilities would be in Mexico and the Mexicans would get water out of it at the end, not only the treatment of their sewage but potable water.

KHOKHA: Eventually, US taxpayers will have to pay the bill for the plant, although private investors would front over $500 million to build it. The US section of the International Boundary and Water Commission has already identified the Bahagua project as their best option, and they're set to finalize that decision today. But even when that treatment plant is built, it still leaves millions of gallons of sewage seeping down the hillside from the Tijuana shantytowns. For NPR News, I'm Sasha Khokha.

WERTHEIMER: You're listening to WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News.

Copyright © 2005 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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Solution Sought to Pacific Ocean Water Pollution

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Untreated wastewater flows from Tijuana, Mexico, into the Pacific Ocean near the California border. Sasha Khokha of NPR station KQED says the U.S. government is expected to endorse a much-debated treatment plant. LINDA WERTHEIMER, host: Millions of gallons of untreated waste pollute the coastal waters off the Mexico-California border each year.

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Proposed stormwater drainage solution needed, Cedar Park residents say 

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Proposed stormwater drainage solution needed, Cedar Park residents say 

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Jake Palid

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When Tropical Storm Hermine pummeled Cedar Park with 12 hours of nonstop rain in 2010, Susan Light and Roger Young found their home trapped in a funnel collecting stormwater runoff from three different directions.

The rising water from Cluck Creek flooded Light's car and quickly overtook the single sump pump running inside the house. The rainfall created a lake in their front yard.

"We were out on the street waving at cars to slow down because they were creating waves that washed into our house," Light said.

In October, the couple attended one of four community meetings hosted by the city to explain a new proposal to pay for drainage improvements. A previous plan by the council to pay for the work with new fees was not pursued. But this time Light and Young are hopeful for a flooding solution.

Staff presented a plan for the city to pay for stormwater drainage improvements with a portion of a sales tax currently earmarked for economic development. Doing so would provide an estimated $1.65 million in sales tax collections to drainage solutions - about how much one quarter of the one-half cent economic development sales tax could generate.

An online city survey in December found most of the 450 residents who completed it in favor of the idea.

Staff said 81 percent of respondents want the new use for the sales tax. The city council is expected to hold public hearings on the proposal this month which could lead to a vote on May 5.

Fran Erwin, community affairs director for the city, presented the results of the stormwater survey to the council on Dec. 19. Erwin said 93 percent of respondents were in favor of a stormwater management program that does not require a tax increase. Seventy-three percent of the survey respondents said they rarely or never had experienced flooding.

"It has a lot to do with property values," Erwin said. "Many of those who responded know residents whose homes have been impacted by flooding.

"Some residents felt strongly about the problem and submitted photos of flooding along with their surveys," she said. "They asked why the city had not already assessed developers to fix the problem."

Light and Young said they would gladly vote in favor of shifting a portion of the city sales tax revenue toward drainage solutions.

Fighting flooding

Currently, the city's general fund pays for basic maintenance, such as debris removal, sweeping and cleaning streets in flood events and regulation compliance, such as clean water maintenance.

"The money we have for maintenance doesn't pay for small and large scale infrastructure projects which are needed to prevent major flooding events without impacting the sales tax rate," said Assistant City Manager Sam Roberts.

The city would like to use about $225,000 of the $1.65 million in estimated new sales tax income to manage the stormwater program for the city. That cost cannot be paid from the city general fund now. About $38 million worth of work has been identified for needed improvements overall including:

Major creek widening

Repair/reconstruction of roadway flood prone areas

Property acquisition

Erosion protection

Major creek sediment removal

Bridge and culvert construction

About $550,000 is earmarked in the city budget annually for increased drainage system maintenance costs and the city also spends an estimated $125,000 a year to comply with state and federal environmental requirements.

"If the council approves it, it will be a citywide vote," Irwin said. "It will really be up to the voters to decide if this is a good use of the economic development sales tax."

In addition to the community meetings, city staff presented the drainage plans at a gathering of homeowner associations. A city website at www.cedarparkdrainage.com also provided information to the public.

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Proposed stormwater drainage solution needed, Cedar Park residents say

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When Tropical Storm Hermine pummeled Cedar Park with 12 hours of nonstop rain in 2010, Susan Light and Roger Young found their home trapped in a funnel collecting stormwater runoff from three different directions. The rising water from Cluck Creek flooded Light's car and quickly overtook the single sump pump running inside the house.

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Solutions for minimizing polluted water run off in different areas.

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Solutions for minimizing polluted water run off in different areas.

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Scott Billitti

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Stormwater Pollution Solutions - Pinal County

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Personal Solutions to reducing pollution in the storm water drains.

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Personal Solutions to reducing pollution in the storm water drains.

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Grace

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In undeveloped areas, precipitation typically soaks into the ground. When buildings, parking lots, roads and other hard surfaces are added to the landscape, the ground cannot absorb the water. Water from rain or snow storms, known as stormwater, instead flows over streets, parking lots and roofs and into a water body or storm drain.

Stormwater runoff is often worsened by human activities, and can contain nitrogen and phosphorus pollutants from fertilizers, pet and yard waste. Because stormwater flows over hard surfaces directly into a water body or storm drain, there is no opportunity for soil and plants or a water treatment facility to filter out pollutants. Urban and suburban areas produce much more stormwater runoff due to the high amount of paved and hard surfaces.

During periods of heavy rainfall or snowmelt, some wastewater systems are designed to occasionally overflow and discharge excess untreated sewage directly to nearby streams, rivers or other water bodies. These discharges are known as combined sewer overflows and are common in many cities nationwide.

Green infrastructure can be used to address stormwater runoff and sewer overflow problems. Green infrastructure works by slowing down the runoff, spreading it out over the land, and slowly soaking it into the ground, or in some cases reusing the water onsite. Green infrastructure is also sometimes referred to as low impact development. These techniques also help to remove pollutants from runoff, buy allowing plants to filter out pollutants as the water slowly infiltrates into the ground. Some examples of green infrastructure techniques include rain gardens, pervious pavement, rain barrels, and green roofs.

Learn more about what you can do to reduce stormwater runoff in your yard.

A Drop's Life

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information management > web site & services

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pollutants & contaminants > biological contaminants > algae

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Sources and Solutions: Stormwater | US EPA

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In undeveloped areas, precipitation typically soaks into the ground. When buildings, parking lots, roads and other hard surfaces are added to the landscape, the ground cannot absorb the water. Water from rain or snow storms, known as stormwater, instead flows over streets, parking lots and roofs and into a water body or storm drain.

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Abby Ridgeway

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Make stormwater pollution prevention your business! When it rains, pollutants spilled on the ground can be carried UNTREATED to rivers, washes, and retention areas. Best Management Practices (BMPs), such as good housekeeping and careful management of materials stored outdoors can prevent stormwater contamination.

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Deferred maintenance on city storm water system may lead to emergencies.  

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Deferred maintenance on city storm water system may lead to emergencies.  

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Jacob Skvarna

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SAN DIEGO - A city of San Diego analysis delivered to the City Council's Audit Committee Wednesday found that Storm Water Division infrastructure faces the largest deferred maintenance backlog of any asset type in the city amid chronically insufficient funding.

Continued deficits could lead to more emergencies and an inability to meet water quality requirements, Principal Senior Performance Auditor Andy Hanau told the committee.

The Storm Water Division is projected to need $891 million to keep up with infrastructure needs and water quality standards over the next five years. Only $433 million in funding has been identified, however, leaving a gap of about $458 million.

Though a relatively new in-house repair team has saved the division money, the establishment of additional efficient practices alone isn't expected to solve the funding issue.

The audit office found that deteriorating corrugated metal pipes are the division's most pressing need.

Despite making up only 4 percent of the city's storm drain system, corrugated pipes accounted for 65 percent of capital improvement projects between 2009 and 2017, nearly all of them the result of pipe failures.

At the city's current pace, it will take 95 years to replace corrugated pipes, even though roughly 90 percent of them have already passed their 35-year "useful life" benchmark.

Compared to proactive maintenance, deferred projects can compound infrastructure costs because of complications arising from part failures and other emergencies.

"This has been going on for so long and we've known about it for years. Each year that goes by we're just kind of stuck at the same amount of funding because we aren't getting any more revenue," City Councilwoman Lorie Zapf said. "... When the pipes burst we get fines - we get lawsuits. There's more money involved, actually, by not having it repaired and maintained. You have increased risk of contaminated water."

Burst pipes can also lead to sinkholes.

Performance auditor Megan Garth said city officials have been notified of Storm Water Divison funding shortages numerous times over the last 20 years, but a supplementary revenue source was never identified.

The division is currently funded by the city's general and infrastructure funds. Its largest revenue source is a monthly storm water fee, which is 95 cents per month for single-family homes.

Water quality fees vary widely between California cities, Hanau said, from nothing up to $12 per month.

San Diego's fee, originally intended to cover the Storm Water Division's costs, hasn't increased since 1996.

Raising the fee is one potential method for cutting into the division's funding gap, Garth said.

A 2014 Public Policy Institute of California report found that voters in state municipalities approved 60 of 73 ballot measures increasing water quality and flood control revenue between 1997 and 2013.

The city could also float a bond measure to voters, take out commercial paper loans or more aggressively pursue grants and state revolving funds.

Officials called for an educational campaign to alert San Diegans of storm water issues and gauge potential enthusiasm for a tax increase or bond proposal.

"Would people be willing to pay the equivalent of one gallon of gas a month to have clean water and clean oceans and bays? I don't know. But we can know if we actually educate people," Zapf said. "...The staggering, sobering statistics that we heard here today are a testament to what we really need to do."

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Deferred maintenance on city storm water system may lead to emergencies

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SAN DIEGO - A city of San Diego analysis delivered to the City Council's Audit Committee Wednesday found that Storm Water Division infrastructure faces the largest deferred maintenance backlog of any asset type in the city amid chronically insufficient funding.

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'Gutter Buddies' in New Orleans to stop beads and plastic from going down the drains

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'Gutter Buddies' in New Orleans to stop beads and plastic from going down the drains

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In New Orleans, Mardi Gras is not just Fat Tuesday itself, it's a multi-week celebration. It's also a huge mess.

The plastic beads, cups, and trinkets that fly from the floats don't all get caught - even by the most enthusiastic crowds. And after a bead has hit the ground it immediately turns from prize to garbage, especially in this year's rain and mud.

After each day's parades, street sweeper trucks and crews do their best to pick up the parade detritus - beads and other throws, beer cans, plastic bags, light-up necklaces that have lost their glow. City officials have even used the garbage tonnage they collect as a sort of carnival-success barometer.

But even with the massive cleanup operation, some trash gets left behind. And it turns out Mardi Gras is terrible for the flood-prone city's storm drains. Last month, officials announced that cleaning crews had pulled 93,000 pounds of old beads out of catch basins on the main parade route.

Dani Galloway, who runs the New Orleans Department of Public Works, calls that number "a smack in the face." So with carnival season looming, Galloway made it her mission to keep more beads from clogging up the drains.

"It was a simple as a visit to Home Depot to try to figure out what we could do that would be, obviously, low cost, a fairly quick turnaround," she says.

Galloway's department experimented with wire and two-by-fours before landing on a combination of metal grates and big orange sandbags. The bead-blockers are affectionately known as "gutter buddies."

The city spent about $30,000 on supplies and hired a contractor to make hundreds of the filter contraptions and install them in storm drains all along the parade route.

The devices are rudimentary, but they seem to be working. On a recent evening, parade-goer Willie Noveck set up his folding chair next to one of the orange gutter buddies, now a bit grimy from days of rain. Holding his boxed wine under one arm, Noveck affirmed the gutter buddies' success. "They're catching, I guess, a lot of plastic bags," he said. "They're definitely doing something!"

A simpler solution to the storm drain problem might be to just...stop throwing beads from Mardi Gras floats. But for Noveck, like many New Orleanians, that's not an option.

"Stop throwing beads?!" he shouted, incredulous. "You cannot be serious about that. That's ridiculous."

Noveck says he has a better idea: parade-goers should focus more on their fielding skills. His proposal? "Let's catch all the beads so we don't have this problem!"

For now, if the people don't catch all the beads, the gutter buddies will.

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New Orleans Hopes 'Gutter Buddies' Will Keep Mardi Gras Beads Out Of Storm Drains

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In New Orleans, Mardi Gras is not just Fat Tuesday itself, it's a multi-week celebration. It's also a huge mess. The plastic beads, cups, and trinkets that fly from the floats don't all get caught - even by the most enthusiastic crowds.

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Andrew

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33 U.S.C. §1251 et seq. (1972)

The Clean Water Act (CWA) establishes the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters. The basis of the CWA was enacted in 1948 and was called the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, but the Act was significantly reorganized and expanded in 1972. "Clean Water Act" became the Act's common name with amendments in 1972.

Under the CWA, EPA has implemented pollution control programs such as setting wastewater standards for industry. EPA has also developed national water quality criteria recommendations for pollutants in surface waters.

The CWA made it unlawful to discharge any pollutant from a point source into navigable waters, unless a permit was obtained:

EPA's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program controls discharges.

Point sources are discrete conveyances such as pipes or man-made ditches.

Individual homes that are connected to a municipal system, use a septic system, or do not have a surface discharge do not need a NPDES permit;

Industrial, municipal, and other facilities must obtain permits if their discharges go directly to surface waters.

Compliance and Enforcement

History of this Act

More Information

The Office of Water (OW) ensures drinking water is safe, and restores and maintains oceans, watersheds, and their aquatic ecosystems to protect human health, support economic and recreational activities, and provide healthy habitat for fish, plants, and wildlife.

The EPA Watershed Academy provides training courses on statutes, watershed protection, and other key Clean Water Act resources.

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support delivery of services > public affairs > official information dissemination > public information & outreach > provide public information

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The Clean Water Act regulates discharges of pollutants into U.S. waters, and controls pollution by means such as wastewater standards for industry, national water quality criteria recommendations for surface waters, and the NPDES permit program.

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The tax, which had been in the works for two years, will help cities across Los Angeles County meet their obligations under the federal Clean Water Act and associated permits given out by the state. Supporters said it would also help make the region more "water resilient" in the face of drought and climate change.

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L.A. County stormwater tax officially passes

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The tax, which had been in the works for two years, will help cities across Los Angeles County meet their obligations under the federal Clean Water Act and associated permits given out by the state. Supporters said it would also help make the region more "water resilient" in the face of drought and climate change.

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San Diego Storm Water Spending Not Nearly Enough, Says City Auditor

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San Diego Storm Water Spending Not Nearly Enough, Says City Auditor

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Jacob Skvarna

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Projected infrastructure spending for the city of San Diego's Storm Water Division isn't even halfway sufficient to meet future needs, a deficiency that could increase the deferred maintenance backlog and affect the city's ability to meet water quality requirements, according to an audit released Thursday.

City Auditor Eduardo Luna said the division needs roughly $891 million to spend on water infrastructure over the next five years, but there's only $433 million in funds identified over that span.

"Although this severe and growing stormwater funding shortage has been well-documented, city officials have not taken sufficient action to inform the public or increase stormwater revenues in over 20 years," Luna wrote.

Though staff can cut costs by increasing maintenance efficiencies, that won't be nearly enough, according to the audit.

The Storm Water Division is responsible for managing urban runoff to minimize flood risk and protect receiving waters, which include the San Diego Bay, Mission Bay and San Diego River. All told, staff manage roughly 900 miles of storm drain pipes and 14 pump stations.

Luna found that inadequate maintenance of the storm drain system has resulted in a large infrastructure backlog, along with associated costly emergency repairs and increased public liability costs.

The division implemented an in-house crew to conduct repairs instead of contractors, but a lack of analysis regarding the optimal size of the team could result in continued over-reliance on contracted repairs, the audit found.

Luna also wrote that the division's current code enforcement tracking system doesn't sufficiently facilitate case management, monitoring or reporting.

The division also doesn't issue re-inspection fees to recover inspection costs and compel quicker compliance with code violations.

To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader.

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San Diego Storm Water Spending Not Nearly Enough, Says City Auditor

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Projected infrastructure spending for the city of San Diego's Storm Water Division isn't even halfway sufficient to meet future needs, a deficiency that could increase the deferred maintenance backlog and affect the city's ability to meet water quality requirements, according to an audit released Thursday.

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California's Storm water Regulations Are Themselves A Toxic Mess.

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California's Storm water Regulations Are Themselves A Toxic Mess.

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Jacob Skvarna

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California's Stormwater Regulations Are Themselves a Toxic Mess

GUEST:

Ry Rivard, reporter, Voice of San Diego
Transcript This is Part One in a three-part series examining stormwater pollution and the flawed system that polices it. Read Part Two here, and Part Three here.
Thousands - perhaps tens of thousands - of California businesses are polluting streams, bays and the ocean, but state environmental regulators don't know how many companies are doing how much damage.

In places like Logan Heights or National City, industry-filled neighborhoods send metals and toxic chemicals into the water, helping to ruin it for humans and poison it for marine life.

An entire regulatory system exists to prevent this - to keep businesses honest, residents safe and fish alive. That system is a mess.

At the beginning of last year, the city of San Diego estimated that 2,400 businesses here were operating without the necessary water pollution control permit. Many business owners may not know they're violating the law; others are trying not to get caught.

At the end of the year, fewer than 400 businesses in San Diego had the permit.

By evading the law, businesses without a permit are propping up their bottom lines. The state estimates it costs $188,400 over five years for a business to get what's known as an Industrial General Permit and comply with its requirements. The goal of the permit is to make sure companies are monitoring and reducing their water pollution.

Across the state, there could be thousands or even tens of thousands of businesses dodging these rules and sending unknown amounts of pollution into the state's waters.

One problem is the state doesn't know how many businesses it's trying to regulate. There could be 20,000 companies in California that need to get a permit and reduce their water pollution. Or 100,000. Or 130,000.

Whatever the actual number - those are each estimates, no one knows for sure - only about 12,000 state businesses are complying with the regulations today.

"The vast majority of people, of facilities that should be doing something about water quality, are doing nothing," said S. Wayne Rosenbaum, an attorney who represents businesses covered by the permit.

That's a huge liability for them if they get caught: If 20,000 businesses should be following clean water rules, the statewide cost to comply might be about $3.7 billion over five years. If 100,000 businesses are covered by the rules, those costs could be nearly $19 billion.

Some current and former environmental regulators wonder if the rules that few are following even make sense.

In the early 1970s, the federal Clean Water Act created the ambitious goal of making every American waterway fishable and swimmable by the mid-1980s. That didn't happen and is a long way off.

In San Diego, about 100 miles of bays, creeks, rivers and shoreline fail to meet federal water-quality standards.

At first, an interwoven network of federal, state and local regulations targeted the biggest polluters - the heavy industries and sewage treatment plants, which had been dumping pollution straight into the nation's waters.

Since then, environmentalists have set their sights on smaller polluters and on urban "stormwater," which is just water on the ground after it rains.

Stormwater sweeps up all kinds of debris and bits of pollution and then carries it out to the ocean. That pollution adds up: copper from brake pads, zinc from the coating on fences and roofs, oil from parking lots, grease from restaurants, pesticides from yards and trash from everywhere.

In 2015, the State Water Resources Control Board tried to get its arms around the problem by expanding its clean water rules to cover businesses that had been exempted from regulations but were still likely sources of pollution. Businesses from scrapyards to vineyards must now get an Industrial General Permit.

Yet, these sites still tend to be a low priority for many regulators, in part because there are so many of them.

"It's a large permit, it's a statewide permit and we're outnumbered," said Laurel Warddrip, the manager of the State Water Resources Control Board's stormwater program.

There are about 75 stormwater regulators at State Water Board and nine regional boards that report to it, including the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board. They oversee not just industrial polluters but also pollution coming of the state's highways, construction sites and sewer systems.

Over the past few years, though, the industrial sites have taken up a lot of their time.

The Industrial General Permit rules are supposed to be updated every five years. The new one was updated in 2014 and took effect in 2015. Before that, it hadn't been updated since 1997.

When the state changed the rules to include more businesses, it arguably did something dumb: It made every business that already had a permit get a new permit. The businesses that had enrolled over the previous 17 years were suddenly kicked out of the system and forced to re-enroll.

David Gibson, executive director of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, said the state effectively doubled everybody's workload. Now, regulators were not only trying to find new businesses that had to comply with the new rules but making sure the old ones got back in line.

Gibson is among those who believe all the attention on small industrial sites is sometimes misplaced. He favors figuring out the biggest threats to water quality and working to reduce those, rather than making sure everybody is doing their paperwork. But he doesn't call the shots - the state does, and the state wanted everybody to get a new permit.

"It's interesting, unfortunately, that we set out these goals of working on a watershed basis and identifying the pollutants of concern," he said of his board's own goals, "but it's ultimately a bureaucratic decision that drives what you actually spend your time on."

The state admits it doesn't have the resources to make sure every business gets a permit. In fact, it doesn't even think it can take a basic step that would ensure that most businesses at least know the permit exists: Send them a piece of mail saying so.

Warddrip said the state has thought about doing outreach to all the businesses that might need to get an Industrial General Permit, but is worried that effort will be more trouble than it's worth.

"We dance around it, because to implement a statewide non-filer outreach effort is very expensive and is a huge staff workload," she said.

If the state sent, say, 10,000 letters, it might have to answer 10,000 of replies or 10,000 phone calls. It would be totally swamped trying to enforce its own regulations.

It sometimes costs a lot to control a little pollution. Some pollution-control technologies are simple and inexpensive. A business can avoid stormwater rules if it's operating indoors, out of the rain. A roof counts, a tarp might also work.

On the expensive end of the spectrum are high-end water treatment devices that use the same technologies desalination plants use to make ocean water drinkable.

Some businesses also try to capture all the water that comes on their property and then they pay truckers to carry it away. Others create small ponds for stormwater to run into, then they let it evaporate.

Some of the biggest companies - shipbuilders, like General Dynamics, for instance - are praised by environmentalists for doing the most to control their pollution, in part because of previous efforts by environmentalists to clean up those industries.

It's now the smaller businesses that have environmentalists' attention. In the past few years, several environmental groups have begun filing dozens of lawsuits against smaller industrial sites that are not complying with stormwater rules.

There's plenty of places to go after.

In San Diego, a few thousand light industrial facilities are escaping oversight by the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, according the city's own pollution control team.

In January 2016, the city produced a list of about 2,400 businesses that it believes should get a pollution control permit but had not. They included bakeries, breweries, furniture-makers, printers, machine shops, limousine services, storage facilities and scrapyards.

At the end of the year, only about 260 businesses in the city had gotten a permit. About another 110 businesses in the city have gotten a "no exposure certification," which means they are technically covered by the permit but don't release any pollution. It costs $200 a year to get this certification, which is essentially the cost of telling the government one of its regulations doesn't apply to you.

Even though the city identified businesses it thinks are breaking the law, the city's job stops there. It doesn't make them get a permit. Instead, it just sends its list to the regional board.

"The city is very diligent in our inspection process in making sure that we refer these businesses to the regional board to make sure they follow through on this state requirement," said Drew Kleis, the deputy director of the city's Division of Stormwater.

The board has found the city's lists to be a waste of time.

Cynthia Gorham, an environmental engineer at the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, said her team has visited businesses on the city's lists and found they are "not conducting industrial activities that are actually subject" to the regulation.

In any case, neither the city nor the board will find much love as they go about doing their job, which is identifying small business owners that may suddenly be on the hook for mounds of paperwork and tens of thousands of dollars in new regulatory costs.
Ry Rivard is a reporter for Voice of San Diego. He writes about water and land use. You can reach him at ry.rivard@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.550.5665.
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California's Stormwater Regulations Are Themselves A Toxic Mess

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California's Stormwater Regulations Are Themselves a Toxic Mess GUEST: Ry Rivard, reporter, Voice of San Diego Transcript This is Part One in a three-part series examining stormwater pollution and the flawed system that polices it. Read Part Two here, and Part Three here.

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Preventing Storm Water Pollution in San Diego

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Preventing Storm Water Pollution in San Diego

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Austin Cesson

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Storm Drains: The City's Next Big Financial Drain

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Storm Drains: The City's Next Big Financial Drain

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Storm Drains: The City's Next Big Financial Drain

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Storm Drains: The City's Next Big Financial Drain

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Austin Cesson

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In the next five years, the city of San Diego will have to increase its spending on stormwater projects an average of $164 million annually, more than it costs to run its park and library systems combined.

To help pay for this, the city could increase homeowners' monthly stormwater fees by more than 1,000 percent, though any increase would require a public vote. If the city doesn't find the money, it could face up to $37,500 in daily fines every time it pollutes the ocean.

"That's a little sobering," City Councilman David Alvarez said Wednesday after hearing a report with all these numbers.

The astronomical figures punctuate a long-running tension for the city over whether to chip away at the backlog of broken infrastructure or build new things residents need.

But unlike San Diego's roads, which continue to deteriorate, and emergency response times, which still fall short of city goals, a failure to invest in stormwater projects could lead to a direct hit to the city's pocketbook through lawsuits and state and federal fines.

New, more stringent regulations from the region's water quality control board detail the amount of pollution allowed to flow from the city's stormdrain system into the ocean - including from rain, people washing their cars and debris from creeks.

The city's price tag includes the costs of repairing stormdrain pipes, but also from more frequent street sweeping and even buying land to collect pollutants before they're washed into the system.

The stormwater department argues that if it doesn't begin to ramp up spending now, it can't possibly meet water quality mandates by the time many go into effect in 2018. The city has known the new regulations were coming for a while - former Mayor Jerry Sanders batted around trying to hike stormwater fees - but ultimately no one took any major steps toward dealing with it. The city's projecting it will cost $2.7 billion over the next 17 years to comply with the rules.

"The thinking was, it's in the future and it's such a ridiculous cost, it can't be correct," said Seth Gates, a co-author of the report for the city's independent budget analyst. "It's on us now, and our staff is saying this is the cost for compliance. People still can't believe it."

To be sure, the numbers could represent a worst-case scenario. Stormwater officials told a City Council committee on Wednesday that they're negotiating with the water quality board to make some of the regulations less stringent. For instance, changes to how metal pollution is calculated in Chollas Creek, which runs through City Heights, southeastern San Diego and Barrio Logan, could lower overall costs by $800 million, officials said.

The city is, however, beginning to take these numbers seriously. In its most recent bond issue, the city told investors that rising stormwater costs were a risk to its financial stability.

Ways to pay for all this have their drawbacks. Any increase to stormwater fees would require a majority vote of all property owners or two-thirds of the general electorate. The city could continue to borrow money for upgrades, but that would compete with money for street and building repairs and cost a lot more when spread out over decades. Cash from the day-to-day budget would compete with police, fire, library hours and other regular government services.

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Storm Drains: The City's Next Big Financial Drain - Voice of San Diego

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In the next five years, the city of San Diego will have to increase its spending on stormwater projects an average of $164 million annually, more than it costs to run its park and library systems combined. To help pay for this, the city could increase homeowners' monthly stormwater fees by more than 1,000 percent, though any increase would require a public vote.

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Adrian

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Each year, San Diego Coastkeeper and Surfrider Foundation, San Diego Chapter partner to host over 30 cleanups throughout the county. The thousands of volunteers who come out to clean our beaches also play an integral role in data collection to help us understand the types and distribution of debris we find. In recent years, we have found that an alarming number of small debris items dominate our tally sheets. The most prevalent, persistent and problematic are cigarette butts, polystyrene and plastics. Combined, these small and frequently-overlooked items account for 70 percent of all debris along San Diego's shoreline. Learn more about:

Cigarette Butts

We found over 75,000 cigarette butts along San Diego County's beaches in 2015, but the problem isn't isolated to Southern California. During Coastal Cleanup Day in 2015, volunteers around the world collected 2,127,565 cigarette butts during the single-day cleanup. Both globally and locally, they are the most dominant and commonly found trash on our shorelines.

Cigarette butts may be small and easily overlooked, but all those little cigarette butts add up to a huge problem for water quality and environmental health. Cigarettes are not biodegradable, which means when they get thrown on the ground, on the beach or out the car window, they won't disintegrate or disappear.
Cigarettes are made of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic, which slowly breaks down, but never fully decomposes. They also contain chemicals that leech into the water when introduced to the aquatic environment.

Sick of cigarette butts on your beach?

Help us fix our marine debris problem one cigarette butt and one beach at a time by advocating for your community, joining us for any one of our beach cleanups and encouraging those who use cigarettes to dispose of them properly. You can also join a TerraCycle campaign to help up-cycle cigarette butts.

The pervasiveness and toxicity of littered cigarette butts is a massive problem, but with a little help from everyone, it's one we can start to turn around . ( Return to top)

Plastic Pollution

Plastics make up more than 60 percent of all marine debris. They pose a serious problem to our marine environment as their synthetic material makeup resists natural degradation processes.

They do not biodegrade. Plastics break down in a photodegrading process - they splinter into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually forming "plastic dust." During this process, they release toxins that harm the ocean and wildlife and people that depend on it.

Regardless of their size, no creatures can digest plastic pollution bits. Plastics in the ocean today will, in some way, stay forever: they will break down into smaller particles, infiltrate the food chain or eventually sink to become part of the makeup of the ocean floor.

You can play a part by keeping plastic debris and other contaminants out of San Diego street gutters and storm drains. Take a moment to think about the end result for each product you buy. Can you truly dispose of "disposable" items or will they actually just last forever, out of sight in our landfills? Reducing our dependence on convenient - but ultimately unnecessary - plastics is a crucial first step in reducing plastic debris in our waters.

You can also chip in to fund our pollution prevention work, become a Coastkeeper member and volunteer at San Diego cleanups. ( Return to top)

Styrofoam

Plastic foam, commonly known as Styrofoam™, endangers human health and the environment.

Plastic foam debris does not biodegrade, but breaks into very small pieces that birds and marine wildlife regularly mistake for food. At our cleanups, these are some of the smallest debris items we encounter and one of the biggest problems.

It's bad for humans, too. The National Toxicology Program lists Styrene, the primary component of Styrofoam™, as a carcinogen. Styrene leaches from the foam when it contacts oily, fatty foods, or when heated. Food represents a significant source of styrene exposure to the American population.

Are there alternatives to plastic foam? Restaurants have alternatives to Styrofoam™ packaging that won't hurt the environment or your pocketbook. A wide range of biodegradable, recyclable or compostable packaging options are available, but some options are not beneficial to the environment or viable for our recycling infrastructure. Good options are recyclable plastic or post-consumer paper. Better yet, bring your own take-home containers when you dine out.
Why make the switch?
"It takes three major components to create change: the manufacturer, the retailer and the customer. Often, the customer demands change, and it happens because the retailer and the manufacturer want to make money. But we think that it's our job to offer products that are sustainable and positive. Right now we sell junk and spend millions on marketing to convince our customers that it's good. Why shouldn't we just do good in the first place?" - Kristen Buchanan, Founder /CEO of GoodOnYa deli ( Return to top)

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Plastic Pollution - San Diego Coastkeeper

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Each year, San Diego Coastkeeper and Surfrider Foundation, San Diego Chapter partner to host over 30 cleanups throughout the county. The thousands of volunteers who come out to clean our beaches also play an integral role in data collection to help us understand the types and distribution of debris we find.

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Adrian

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In San Diego, beach cleanups are more than a rite of spring; they have become, unfortunately, a way of life.

During 2017, our organizations held nearly 120 beach cleanups, with more than 7,000 volunteers removing more than 9,352 pounds of trash and debris that otherwise would have ended up in our ocean. If that wasn't enough, the county's popular annual Coastal Cleanup Day resulted in more than 185,000 pounds of litter being scooped up from 114 coastal and inland sites.

Each year, we keep hoping we will see less plastic wash up on our shores. But we are discovering just the opposite is true: plastic pollution is worse than ever. And one of the items we are finding on our beaches more often - the plastic bottle cap - is partially to blame.

In 1977, the bottled water revolution was launched, and sales have been surging ever since. In 2016, bottled water passed soda as America's top-selling beverage - a total of 12.8 billion gallons a year, packaged in more than 50 billion plastic bottles, most sealed with detachable caps.

In California, five billion of these caps each year are landfilled or littered. An untold number make their way into our creeks and rivers, or are washed into the Pacific Ocean.

Bottle caps are the third most common item picked up during California's annual Coastal Cleanup Day. They are small, buoyant and mistaken for food by marine wildlife. Studies show that 90 percent of all seabirds have ingested plastic, including bottle caps. Many die of starvation with stomachs full of plastic. Bottle caps and other plastic products break down and are also ingested by the fish we eat.

Though beach cleanups prevent some of the caps from reaching the ocean, there is an urgent need to stop the problem at its source to avoid irreparable harm to marine life.

The good news is that there is a way to reduce the quantity of bottle caps that escape recycling. Just like when litter from aluminum can pull tabs was eliminated in the 1970s by the industry shift to the pop-top, plastic bottle caps can be eliminated by the same type of design change. Existing technology makes it relatively easy to tether the caps during the bottling process, so they stay with the bottle and don't escape onto our beaches and coastlines.

Some bottled water producers, including Crystal Geyser, are already offering their products with tethered caps and others are making the switch. A San Bruno-based company has technology that is expected to be deployed on plastic water bottles distributed in South Africa, Asia and India in just a few months.

Making the switch can be accomplished by adding a small blade to current capping equipment that inserts a slit into the cap. Alternatively, since most bottlers replace capping machinery every few years anyway, a relatively quick transition to tethered caps could happen when equipment is being replaced.

The timing for such a transition is ideal because last month, China, which had been the principal destination for recyclable plastics from the United States and Europe, stopped accepting plastic waste imports. For California to reach its 75 percent statewide recycling goal, we must find new ways to reduce and recycle plastic waste, and in-state plastic recyclers want those caps.

A bill slated for a vote in the California Assembly by month's end, Assembly Bill 319 by Assemblyman Mark Stone, D-Monterey Bay, mandates the use of tethered caps on plastic bottles by 2020. The solution is available and practical, and the switch can be made without disrupting any existing businesses or industry.

It's time for the Legislature to pass this common-sense bill to protect our oceans and coastlines and connect the caps.
Aguirre is the coastal and marine director of Wildcoast; Hodges is the plastic pollution manager of the Surfrider Foundation.

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How California lawmakers can reduce plastic pollution

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In San Diego, beach cleanups are more than a rite of spring; they have become, unfortunately, a way of life. During 2017, our organizations held nearly 120 beach cleanups, with more than 7,000 volunteers removing more than 9,352 pounds of trash and debris that otherwise would have ended up in our ocean.