WaterL.A County to turn rain water into drinking water

Residents of Los Angeles County know that on the rare occasion that it rains, staying away from the beach is a good idea.

“The water will have this weird, funky smell to it,” Sean Stanley, 26, told the New York Times. “It’s murky. You’ll see soda cans and plastic bottles, oil from the cars. All the runoff from the city gets in there.”

Storm water has become a serious problem around the country. The Clean Water Act, which was passed by Congress forty years ago, has mandated the cleanup of wastewater and runoff from industrial facilities.

For L.A. County, the problem is even more serious. Seven of the ten most polluted beaches in the state call L. A. County home, a fact which has hurt the region’s economy because stores and business along the beaches bring millions of dollars into the county.

The Times notes that around the county, runoff from rain typically brings heavy metals, pesticides, cigarette butts, animal waste, and other pollutants  into the streams and rivers which go into the Pacific Ocean.

Now, local officials are getting together to find a solution to the water pollution and water scarcity, with an ambitious plan to make the runoff water drinkable.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board has issued new rules for the county, with strong incentives for cities to come together  to work and pay for projects which will capture and filter rainwater in the ground.

The New York Times reports that officials believe the plan will keep pollution out of the waterways and bolster groundwater supplies, which could be used in the future for drinking water.

According to Jared Blumenfield, the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator for California, Nevada, Arizona, and Hawaii, L.A. County was the first to step up to deal with the storm and drinking water problem. He says the plan is “a really important step forward in thinking about storm water.”

“If you think about how much money we spend getting water to Los Angeles from elsewhere, the potential for rainwater capture is great,” Blumenfield told the Times. “Integrating that goal into a plan to deal with storm water before it becomes a problem is a big innovation coming out of Los Angeles.”

The only issue standing in the way is how to pay for the project.

County supervisors have proposed a fee on property owners which would raise $290 million per year in order to finance a project to lessen the impact of runoff pollution. The backlash to  that plan, however, was so strong the plan was put on hold indefinitely.

The plan would have cost major landowners millions of dollars, and one Santa Clara city council member blasted the fee calling it “a tax on God’s good rain.” A second Santa Clara council member said residents were already paying a fee to finance a city program to keep runoff pollution out of the county’s waterways.

“What we don’t understand is why we have to pay another fee on top of what we already pay,” the council member, Marsha McLean, said at a recent meeting of the county supervisors. “Our residents can’t afford it. The city can’t afford it.”

One method to pump money into the project will be from fines over toxin levels – fines which are expected to increase significantly under the new regulations.

“It could actually bankrupt some agencies with costs and penalties,” Zev Yaroslavsky, a Los Angeles County supervisor whose district includes much of the coastline, told the Times. “This is a very expensive proposition, but we have no choice.”

Those who oppose the new regulations, which include some cities, have filed petitions with the state water board, saying that the regulations do not adhere to federal and state guidelines and others believe it is on the state to ensure water quality.