City and county officials, labor unions, and environmentalists packed the intimate Loma Linda City Council chamber to share their views at the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board’s Friday meeting on proposed new sweeping water runoff regulations.
Part of the state’s environmental agency, the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board is proposing new regulations to decrease pollution in water from storm drains and flood control channels across large areas of the Santa Ana River Basin, with what is known as the “Regional MS4 Permit.” The regulations would affect Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties as the Santa Ana River Basin stretches from the San Bernardino Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
Though the Santa Ana Water Board members did not vote to adopt MS4 – the vote is scheduled for a Sept. 11 meeting – several city and county officials made it clear in the City Council chamber that they disapproved of the proposed regulations.
As an example of what may be required, local government agencies would have to have systems in place to keep trash and other contaminants from polluting the waterway.
“We’re way behind the eight ball on getting a permit in place,” said Kris Murray, Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board member. At least eight speakers from the county, environmental groups, and water board staff spoke during the Friday meeting.
Dawn Rowe, chair of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, said the regulations would place a heavy financial burden on county residents. She cited an economic impact report by Beacon Economics to independently analyze the proposed stormwater requirements. The county paid $37,000 for the Los Angeles-based consultant for the analysis, according to San Bernardino County spokesperson Jannelle Needham.
The report indicates that the proposed stormwater requirements would cost the county and 16 of its cities $11 billion over the next 20 years.
“When we look at the cost that we have to add on to development or to our residents, many of our residents are disenfranchised; they are on the lower-income side. The county cannot absorb the cost that would be a tremendous increase to all of these counties for this permit, and so inevitably it would be passed on to our residents and businesses,” Rowe said.
But Eric Lindberg, executive officer at the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, said the permit’s cost of compliance has been “grossly exaggerated.”
“I think that the permit gives us the structure to identify the places where we’re not succeeding and how to improve it. Our goal is always incremental improvements in water quality,” Lindberg said.
Legal Director Sarah Spinuzzi of the Orange County Coastkeeper, a nonprofit that looks to protect waters in Orange County, advocates for stricter stormwater runoff regulations in Southern California and said the group sees numerous inadequacies with the water board’s current draft permit.
Among Coastkeeper’s concerns is how the Santa Ana Water Board’s new runoff regulations will be enforced.
“The reality is that elected officials have many competing interests that are equally important to them, if not more important to them than clean water, so anything that’s adopted needs to have strong enough regulatory language that their elected officials, who actually have to allocate something from the general fund, are going to be willing to do that,” Spinuzzi said.
Amanda Carr, deputy director for Orange County Environmental Resources at OC Public Works, said crafting the permit “needs to be a collaborative process,” including working with the Coastkeeper group.
By working together, Carr said during the public hearing, “We would have a level of implementation required to address concerns from Coastkeeper about the level of rigor and the level of implementation.”
The MS4 permit’s fate is scheduled to be decided at the next Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board meeting on Sept. 11. The meeting will be held at the Irvine Ranch Water District, 15600 Sand Canyon Ave, Irvine, starting at 9 a.m.