Water Pollution

This has been a major environmental issue for decades.  A vast legacy of science, law and public policy has arisen in response to the critical issue of polluted water.  Unfortunately, once water pollution from non-point sources (essentially pollution that does not flow out of a pipe) became the subject of regulatory action, progress on stopping pollution has ground to a crawl, foundering on the weaknesses in the law and the vast complexity of the problems. Small creative solutions are appearing to address certain problems but these solutions must be adopted on a wide scale to be more than demonstration projects.

Erosion, Soil Pollution from Logging Operations:

The Lompico Watershed Conservancy entered this field just as forestry regulation collided with decades of failure to effectively control erosion off of logging sites.  This took place when the California State Legislature revoked a Memorandum of Understanding between the California Department of Forestry and the State Water Board.   This failed agreement signed in 1988 had convened to CDF the authority to regulate for water pollution from logging operations. By the late 1990's it was abundantly clear that commercial logging was demolishing streams all over northern California.  The most outrageous examples were streams north of San Francisco subjected to clearcut and burn logging that were filling with sediment and flooding out homeowners who lived in watersheds like Freshwater Creek near Eureka CA.  Many many streams were severely impacted with no effective legal enforcement or consequences for causing long-term damage.  Despite much elaborate public relations non-sense from local timber companies, this problem is also acute in the Santa Cruz Mountains as extremely erosive terrain is heavily road-ed and logged over on a revolving 10 to 14 year cycle.

After more years of delay, in 2002 the Regional Water Quality Control Boards were handed the job of dealing with this huge accumulated problem.  Did they solve it.  No, the State Water Code does not give the Regional Board authority to regulate the conduct of logging operations and this section of law was not improved.  So the Regional Boards attempted to address this confusion with more layers of complex but often useless protocols like monitoring for pollution but not actually stopping the actions that cause it, though some limited progress has been make.  The physical/scientific task of actually monitoring for soil erosion off of a logging site is very complex and the Regional Boards give this monitoring task to the very people who cause the problem, specifically the forester RPFs (Registered Professional Foresters) who write and supervise logging plans.  This is another fundamental problem in the Water Code, the polluter does the monitoring.   The pretense in the law is that the polluter pays to correct problems, but since the problems are monitored for by the polluter, that "actor" has an obvious incentive to minimize the problem.

The Lompico Watershed Conservancy worked for over two years to try to convince the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board to use independent monitoring specialists, to develop a realistic criteria for monitoring soil erosion, and to direct their staff to participate fully in the Timber Harvest Review Team process where they could effect logging practice.  We worked with the Sierra Club, the Ocean Conservancy and other groups. We engaged scientists and legal council, but we were largely unsuccessful in the big picture.

We are not alone.  Virtually all public advocates for improved water pollution control are continually thwarted in the policy arena, be this agricultural pollution, construction sites, mining, logging, various industrial dischargers, or city storm water management.  Small improvements are not keeping up with the swelling magnitude of this huge problem of non-point source pollution.

There is a principle in political science that a bureaucratic agency will tend to form a cooperative relationship with the industry they are established to regulate.  The failure to effectively address soil erosion from logging is a perfect example of this problem as is the entire spectrum of forestry regulation. The Timber Industry is very effective and sends teams of lobbyists and attorneys to the various agencies they must deal with.  Of course if you read their public statements you will see, that in their eyes, they are unjustly targeted and should be trusted as exemplary protectors of the Public Trust.  Every industry ever confronted about the problems they cause will take this approach to public relations.

Storm Water Management Plans: Recently the Regional Boards have been requiring cities and counties to prepare and implement Storm Water Management Plans or SWMPs.  These documents are plans and designs for reducing the discharge of polluted water from city streets and urbanized areas through culverts and drains.  Cities and counties are resisting change because it can be costly and it requires them to demand compliance from businesses and homeowners.

Huge volumes of polluted water come off of urbanized paved areas and roof tops during rain storms.  This water goes into rivers, lakes, and near shore ocean and bay waters.  It is harmful to people, wildlife, and drinking water sources. People swimming and surfing in Monterey Bay are getting sick from this water.  Sea Otters are dying from diseases transmitted from house cats.  Imagine how much water flows off of downtown streets and how polluted this water is after flowing through parking lots, street gutters, industrial areas and thousands of small yards.  This water carries every kind of pollutant imaginable from pet waste to complex chemicals. This water could be a resource but once polluted it is a big problem.  The solutions to this situation are many, from keeping sufficient open vegetated ground available for the water to soak into the soil, to filtering water in storm drains, to directing roof drains into water storage basins.  In other words, many different solutions must be employed.   The plans being developed are often evasive and tend toward small changes at the expense of the big changes that will be necessary to correct the problem.  Delay is the name of the game here.  It took 35 years after the passage of the Clean Water Act for Storm Water to get on the agenda, decades during which huge areas were covered with asphalt making the problem far larger.  Now more stalling and delays take place based upon the new implementation plans being written.

When the SWMP was adopted for Santa Cruz County, only five people represented the public interest at that hearing,  Kevin Collins for the Lompico Watershed Conservancy, Dennis Davie for the Sierra Club, Bruce Daniels for the Soquel Creek Water District and Mike Guth and Barbara Daniels on behalf of themselves.  Mike had followed this process since 2003.  We got some small improvements in the plan but five people is not enough.  Where were all the other "environmental groups"?  Answer, some had actually signed on to the County's evasive plan perhaps because they are contractors to the County on other matters.  How many people even knew this very important decision was being made?  Answer, a few other members of the public sent in comment letters as a result of activism by the Conservancy, but the number is too low for such an important matter of public policy.

Below is the text of a Lompico Watershed Conservancy letter to the Regional Board regarding this County SWMP

Subject: Draft Stormwater Management Plan from the County of Santa Cruz-City of Capitola and the County Board of Supervisors approved letter dated January 13, 2009

Greetings Mr. Young,

This letter opposes the position of Santa Cruz County and the City of Capitola regarding their draft Stormwater Management Plan. Our comments address the County's letter to the Central Coast Regional Board dated January 13. We support the RB3 staff position.

Many of our comments on this matter will be found in our attached letter to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors dated January 12, 2009. Please consider this attached letter to be our additional comments to the Regional Board on this matter. Both letters address this issue together to the Regional Board.

The County bases much of its argument to your Board upon the grounds that the County's existing ordinances, policies and monitoring programs constitute the basis of good stormwater management.

On paper this might appear to be true. However, as long time residents and concerned citizens of this County, citizens who have taken a close look at County policy and attempted to convince the County to both follow and to enforce its ordinances, we find this County position to be hollow. If necessary we can produce demonstrable evidence of the County Planning Department's evasion of its code enforcement responsibilities. We can demonstrate that the county Riparian Corridor Protection Ordinance is routinely dismissed through "exceptions" and similar variances. These include situations where the County is the "applicant" on development proposals, as described in our attached letter to the Board of Supervisors.

As a conservation organization working on water quality issues, we find this situation to be very discouraging. For this reason and others we recommend that the Regional Board insist upon County compliance with your staff recommendations for revisions and additions to the County Stormwater Management Plan as proposed.

It is very difficult and time consuming to track compliance with County codes. It is a task beyond the capacity of ordinary citizens. Within the Conservancy there is special expertise in this matter. For this reason we recommend that the Regional Board require an annual list of all grading ordinance and riparian corridor ordinance exceptions, exemptions, variances and code enforcement actions as part of the SWMP. Only then can the Regional Board have any means to assess the grounds for the County's claim that these ordinances constitute the basis for a Storm Water Management Plan.

The County asserts that your staff's requirements for a SWMP are unnecessary and too costly. However within this process is a provision called MEP or, to the Maximum Extent Possible. We see considerable flexibility in the Regional Board's position if the County were to begin to cooperate and develop a program as requested. Considering the amount of water contact recreation that occurs in the lower San Lorenzo River, in other streams, and along the Monterey Bay coast, what makes this County special is the degree to which human health is impacted by water pollution.

The Conservancy is particularly interested in endangered species protection. The coho salmon once common in this area are on the brink of extinction. Steelhead, western pond turtles, red-legged frogs, birds, amphibians and other wildlife are listed under both Endangered Species Acts. All this wildlife and many other species are adversely impacted by hydromodification, water pollution and loss of riparian habitat. A well designed and monitored SWMP would assist in the recovery of these animals and many others. Stormwater is generally viewed as an urban issue but it applies to many paved and developed areas in the more rural parts of Santa Cruz County. It affects upper watersheds in many cases. There is a huge opportunity for improvement that the County should seize upon, if it is actually concerned about water pollution problems.

The hydromodification standards contained in the staff schedules appear to be very difficult, however we understand them to be goals and guidelines and not absolute limits on each discrete permit that the County might issue. This is where we see room for negotiation regarding offsets and other methods of compliance if the County cooperated with the Regional Board's program. After so much bad design by local jurisdictions, it is time to reverse course and implement the already tested methods of making stormwater a resource instead of simply a problem to be "jetted" off into a waterbody as polluted discharge. The County letter describes a "Commercial Redevelopment on 41st Avenue" as an example of the problem it has with hydromodification standards. To quote from their page 15:

"Because the site contains about 20,000 square feet of impervious area, under the RWQCB’s interim criteria, redesign of the site would be required so that the effective impervious area (EIA) was limited to 5% of the project area. To achieve this criterion, the project applicant would be required to reduce the size of the restaurant and/or reduce the amount of parking available or use alternative pervious or semi-impervious paving. "

We find this statement to be astonishing. Pervious pavements, swales and other similar solutions are exactly what solving hydromodification is all about! If the County is going to use this as an example of their problem with SWMPs, how is the Regional Board to take any of the County's claims regarding its intent to write its own standards seriously?

Looking at this in reverse; this statement is clear evidence that the County is not qualified, nor is it prepared to deal with stormwater management in a way that will comply with the law. Replacing the tens of square miles of impermeable asphalt in this County is a long-term solution to water pollution and ground water recharge, it is not the problem! 41st. avenue is a hydromodification disaster zone badly in need of solutions. The County has offered no reasonable solution. What the County has provided are facile objections to state and federal law.

Regarding the TMDLs and Wasteload Allocation Attainment Plans (WAAP), we see huge holes in the water quality testing now conducted by Santa Cruz County. This makes for big opportunities to improve these programs and to better understand what the real sources of pollutants are. Please review our attached letter as it applies to current testing by the County Department of Environmental Health. The County's assertion that they cannot distinguish between various sources of pollution simply reveals that their testing protocols are inadequate. In the current financial downturn it is our hope that the Regional Board and the County will come to agreement on a plan to begin to improve testing programs over time as methods develop with experience. Again we see flexibility in the Regional Board position that the County does not acknowledge. It is quite obvious that compliance with the TMDL can never be attained if the information is missing. The County position appears to us to be more rhetorical than factual.

In conclusion:

It gives us no satisfaction whatsoever to object to the County position in this matter. In the past the Conservancy and the County have had a very productive working relationship that we hope to see again. We support the Regional Board staff position as it applies to a County Stormwater Management Plan. We cannot detect a dependable willingness on behalf of the County to deal with this problem without strong guidance and supervision by the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Regards,

Kevin Collins