Watershed Event

New strategies to fight pollution along Ventura County’s major waterways signal the federal government’s intention to finally get serious about some of the most pernicious but least regulated pollutants that foul beaches and make rivers hazardous to aquatic life.

For nearly three decades, the fight for clean water has focused on the most obvious offenders: sewage treatment plants and industrial outfall pipes. But under an agreement reached recently between environmentalists and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, attention now shifts to tainted runoff from thousands of small, dispersed sources, including farms, small businesses and even houses.

The agreement, which settles a lawsuit accusing the federal government of ignoring small but significant polluters, affects 10 major Ventura County waterways burdened by excessive contamination. Cleaner beaches and marshes and better drinking water should result as upstream discharges are cleaned up.

But the program will be expensive, rivaling the most ambitious anti-pollution initiatives in the nation’s history--$75 billion has been spent since 1972 to upgrade sewage treatment plants--and it might require the creation of special watchdog committees on each waterway.

The Jan. 19 settlement will affect Calleguas Creek, the Santa Clara River and the Ventura River. Estuaries and bays facing new controls include the Santa Clara River mouth, Mugu Lagoon, Ventura Harbor, Channel Islands Harbor and Port Hueneme. Beaches to be targeted include McGrath State Beach and Mandalay Beach.

Those bodies of water are among 130 in Los Angeles and Ventura counties targeted for cleanup over the next 13 years. All are compromised by a variety of contaminants, from sewage to heavy metals to pesticides.

The new battle plan dovetails neatly with similar efforts already underway in Ventura County to address water quality concerns throughout entire watersheds deemed vital to wildlife, water supply and recreation.

At Rincon Creek, the process is driven by the need to control bacteria plaguing surfers. In the Ventura River, steelhead recovery and beach erosion are forcing a top-to-bottom reevaluation of the stream.

At Calleguas Creek, cleanup of Mugu Lagoon and flood control are among concerns driving a search for new management options. In the Santa Clara River, the impetus is protection from upstream development in Los Angeles County and the need to provide clean drinking water. The river replenishes aquifers that serve 170,000 residents on the Oxnard Plain.

Unlike the past, when factories belched colorful chemical effluent and treatment plants dumped raw sewage into waterways, much of today’s pollution comes from little, diffuse sources, but which together pack a powerful contaminant punch.

“The gains of the ‘70s and ‘80s were for end-of-pipe discharges and sewage treatment plants,� said Alexis Strauss, acting director of the water division in EPA’s California office. “What we came to realize is those gains have reached a plateau and we still have polluted waters that are not meeting their requirements. We still have beaches that have to be closed. Why aren’t we making gains? It’s storm-water runoff.

“Now what we’re looking at is the overall health of the water body, looking at it from the point of view of being a resource for wildlife, aquatic life, for beneficial uses for people, such as drinking water, and looking at the whole watershed to protect its overall health. This is a dramatic change in outlook,� Strauss said.

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The change in philosophy will require a shift in strategy. Tactics that worked for giant, clearly identifiable polluters probably will not work for small polluters, said Vicki Musgrove, manager of storm-water quality for Ventura County. It means the fight for clean water in Ventura County will reach the doorsteps of sources unaccustomed to regulation concerning water pollution: small businesses, consumers and farmers.

For shopping centers, it could mean installation of devices to capture dribs and drabs of motor oil in parking lots. For farms, it could mean greater use of drip irrigation so pesticides do not wash into streams.

For restaurants, it might be as simple as putting lids on outdoor dumpsters so rain doesn’t carry greasy wastes into storm drains. Homeowners might be required to pick up pet waste and use fewer lawn chemicals.

“The alternative is to put a treatment plant at the end of every storm drain, clear to the ocean, and we can’t afford to do that. You have to work as close to the source of the pollutants as possible,� Musgrove said.

Consensus Approach

And because so many pollution sources are involved, a new layer of bureaucracy may be needed in the form of ad hoc committees responsible for each watershed. That is a marked break from the traditional “command and control� method, in which state and federal regulators decide what the remedy is and impose it on major polluters.

“You have to use different approaches to deal with non-point pollution,� said John Buse of the Environmental Defense Center in Ventura. “It’s the idea that a consensus-based approach is the solution to watershed management.�

The costs, however, could be significant. The program is so new that the government has not yet put a price tag on it. Indeed, officials say it may be impossible to estimate one, given the dispersed nature of the pollution threat.

At a minimum, officials say it might rival the expenditure the federal government has already made on other clean-water programs in the United States. Since the 1972 Clean Water Act, the government has spent $75 billion for loans and grants to upgrade sewage treatment plants.

“It’s going to have costs for everybody,� Musgrove said.

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Addressing small pollution sources, however, could be as simple as good housekeeping. For example, an auto repair shop could reduce water pollution by sweeping copper shards spilled from brake jobs more frequently. Road crews could cut sediment flows to streams by using vacuums to suck up oil-soaked grit when they cut concrete on highways. A junkyard or golf course could divert storm-water runoff into man-made marshes so plants and bacteria can degrade the chemicals before they reach streams.

David Kleitsch, economic development manager for Ventura, said his agency will pay close attention to the program.

“It’s clearly something we’ll monitor and find out where it’s going. It’s too soon to know what the impacts will be,� Kleitsch said.

The magnitude of the problem requires bold new action, officials say. Despite spending billions of dollars to combat water pollution, 40% of the nation’s waterways remain unfit for fishing or swimming, according to the EPA. This month, Ventura County for the first time began routinely posting beaches as unsafe for swimming because bacteria, running into the ocean from storm drains, reached unsafe levels.

Under terms of the lawsuit settlement, state regulators would establish “total maximum daily loads� of pollutants in a given waterway. Once those limits are established, upstream sources will be forced to make reductions to achieve the goals, said Dennis Dickerson, executive officer for the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The strategy is similar to one already used under the nation’s Clean Air Act, which requires all polluters in a region to reduce emissions to meet the target.

At Mugu Lagoon, where regulators are grappling with a chemical brew that includes pesticides, heavy metals and polychlorinated biphenyls, pollution limits must be established by 2005.

In the Ventura River, chemical nutrients that cause algae blooms and stream-clogging litter must be controlled. New pollution limits for the Santa Clara River, plagued by salts and nitrogen-based compounds that degrade an Oxnard water table providing drinking water to 170,000 people, must be developed by 2002.

“This will put some standards in place that everyone can shoot for,� said Ron Bottorff, chairman of Friends of the Santa Clara River. “This is a major step on the way to clean water.�

Pinpointing Sources

Once the pollution limits are in place, efforts will shift to developing cleanup strategies. In the meantime, officials are beginning to try to find out exactly where all the pollution comes from.

One of the most ambitious investigations is underway on the 100-square-mile Calleguas Creek watershed, which drains runoff from Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark and Camarillo. The creek, the site of a massive sewage spill in Thousand Oaks last year, replenishes underground drinking water supplies used by farms and 100,000 people.

Officials have spent the past year attempting to identify just where pollution in the stream comes from and to find remedies. The $2-million investigation will be completed by 2002, said Donald R. Kendall, general manager for the Calleguas Municipal Water District.

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Calleguas Creek carries lots of nitrate, a chemical linked to blue baby syndrome, which robs infants of the ability to absorb oxygen. Nitrate likely is flushed into the stream from sewage plants, agricultural fertilizers and septic tanks.

“The same problems with storm runoff in urban areas cause problems in Ventura [County],� said David Beckman, an attorney for Heal the Bay and Santa Monica BayKeeper, the two environmental groups that sued to force the EPA to make the changes. “The settlement is a road map to get us to fishable, swimmable waters.�