Redwood Reader

County to Fight Water Cleanup Rules
Supervisors' vote against a costly plan for runoff is criticized by environmentalists.
June 23, 2005 By Jack Leonard, Times Staff Writer
The city council of Los angeles this week refused to pass legislation that would make runoff the responsibility of the landowner. We can speak with some knowledge because Jim Marple railed against Munincippal Water District’s policies in Waterforum for quite a while. Much of the opposition came from operators and engineers of existing public works and often sounded like they were defending turf rather than being open to new thinking. Marple’s several points included the fact that all of LA’s water needs could be met by capturing ten percent of its annual rainfall in underground storage, whether by soil or vault or aquifer; the high cost of pumping water over the Tehatchapi’s, flooding, flooding prevention construction that robs the biological zones of infiltrated water and costs taxpayers millions in construction and even more on upkeep and monitoring, degrading habitat conditions in regions that are receiving less water, and a self perpetuating bureaucracy closed to new thinking, all at taxpayer expense.
While it is easy to see why a government like LA’s might be nervous about such a huge shift, the reality is that the world is turning greener. The Chesapeake Bay recovery program is on a larger scale in terms of population and previously built lands, yet their ambitious plans are going forward. We point out that Chesapeake Bay suffers many similar problems as coastal runoff in California but has taken a more drastic approach. In time landowner precipitation responsibility will come to LA anyway, probably as Federal law, so preparation would seem like a good idea, especially regarding rewriting building and public safety codes and municipal water sources.
A recent report on runoff into Humboldt Bay from the first flushing rains of the season givce some idea of the problems although Humboldt has far less amounts and types of runoff contaminants. Besides threatening ingredients, controlling runoff on the surface causes more erosive processes and has led to concreting the drainages, totally removing this water from the biologically active areas, reducing habitat and assisting the general dehydration of the landscape.
The need to preserve as functional the storage of precipitation in biologically conditioned soils is made evident this year in the Pacific Northwest, where a drought has brought down river levels and fish counts drastically, in one year. This is due to the cumulative impacts of many years of timber cutting reducing the lands ability to store water. What should be five years of soil moisture in old growth Douglas fir forests has dwindled to complete panic in one dry year. Global warming cannot occur that fast but destruction of the lands ability to deal with it can. So we are likely to see combinations of punches thrown at our natural systems, and we, as instigators of this, will have to “defend ourselves at all times.” Another example is repeated fires in the mountains and deserts surrounding the Basin. These coupled with construction and logging have left the ability of the land to deal with storms severely impacted. The results that can be traced to this include more frequent fires, increased runoff in similar storms, increased mudslides, insect attacks killing more trees, thus holding less water and aggravating the spiral, lowered river levels, loss of habitat and recreational opportunities and a higher cost for power.
All of this engineering has as its crown jewel the system of dams that water western cities and provide electric power to California. Yet California is situated in a far more promising place for renewable energy than most regions. The governor has called for a million new homes to be built as mini solar stations, utilizing solar on homes for electrical generation. This plan should include the remediation for storm water runoff immediately back underground, as Fresno has done, where it is clean, does not evaporate, cannot flood and requires little post construction monitoring or upkeep and is available to feed springs and creeks downstream. Wind farms are a common California sight, with better technology always appearing.
The use of tidal power is another system being studied. Tidal power counts on the changing of tides near shore to drive generators. Tidal power stations need a very high tide to be effective. One good example I know of is in St. Johns, New Brunswick, on the Bay of Fundy. The really exciting news is the Sea Dog project that captures the motion of swells to generate electricity beyond the breakers. In this scenario swells raise a platform that falls with the passing swell driving the generators. This seems like a really good idea with potentially less impacts than near shore plants. Indeed. Most structures put in the sea seem to attract a lot of life to them, from redwood logs to industrial waste like the Tin Can Grounds off New York Harbor, a famous bluefish spot.. My old home town of Smithtown LI drastically improved fishing and its landfill problems by creating fish habitat with tires bolted together in sixes to from tubes and filling them with concrete. These spots became hot fishing areas in just a few years of placement. I doubt today we would do that with tires but the speed of colonization is amazing.
California will do well to take this information into account in new development as well, where it is easiest to implement. When a plan to develop a large area comes into focus look to its infrastructure. Does it include a storm water runoff component or will it be developed so that is not necessary? Will the region retain some biological capacity or are we writing it all off in hopes we can avoid ESA actions? Will we use the annual rainfall that falls on our land or will we throw it away and go get somebody else’s at great expense to us and them, with little thought of non human consumers?
In light of this the vote to appeal the ruling seems short sighted. And I have not even gotten to the source of the fight- polluted beaches. This is the tag end of inland rainfall capture problems. Runoff CAN be seriously lessened by simple management practices. Proven systems exist, indeed abound, but leaders are not so easy to sway until economics or a higher level of law demand action. In this case loss of beaches should force re-examination of all runoff programs and activities in the Basin.