New Rules Focus on Cleaning Up Runoff : Environment: Federal regulations require city and county officials to inventory drainage systems and reduce pollutants that flow into the ocean and other waterways.

A new federal program is forcing city and county officials to take a fresh look at the untreated pollution that storm drains flush into area waterways and, ultimately, to the ocean.

Throughout the county, gutters and parking lots loaded with trash, street oil, tire particles, paint, dog droppings, leaves and other pollutants drain into catch basins beneath the streets.

Excess water from fertilized or pesticide-treated lawns and farm fields also flows into the drains and basins, pushing the debris along until it is funneled into the county’s creeks, barrancas and rivers.

A good storm flushes the channels, carrying a pollution-laden load of sediment and debris to the ocean--at San Buenaventura State Beach in Ventura where surfers ride the waves, at Mandalay and Ormond beaches in Oxnard where families swim and wade, at Mugu Lagoon at Point Mugu where harbor seals loaf in the sun and endangered birds dig out nests in the sand.

“Sometimes down here, especially after it rains, you see slime and a little rainbow-colored sheen from the oil,” said Clark Aflague, a Ventura construction manager who has wind-surfed the waters off Surfers Point in Ventura for 10 years. “You know something’s not right.”

Aflague said he and other surfers have noticed that if they go in the water with a cut or scratch, their small wounds often develop into potentially serious staphylococcus infections.

“Some of the guys get sores that keep getting worse and go all the way down to the bone,” said Rod King, a windsurfer and registered nurse. “They just never heal up.”

The contaminants also harm the delicate ecosystems in river and ocean wetlands, said Cathy Brown, biologist at the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Ventura. She said the wetlands support myriad plant and animal species.

“Things like petroleum products are toxic to all kinds of life both vegetative and animal,” Brown said. “People don’t think about where their waste goes when they pour it down a storm drain or wash it down the street. It goes to the ocean or to coastal wetlands that should be protected.”

A federally mandated program, which is still in the early, information-gathering stage, focuses for the first time on wastes carried to the ocean with runoff from city and county streets, parking lots and fields. The program, mandated under the Clean Water Act, is being implemented by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has subsequently turned over enforcement responsibilities to the states.

Until now, the Clean Water Act has regulated only discharges from industry and sewage treatment plants. “Now the sewage treatment plants and the oil companies have pretty much cleaned up their act,” said Robert Montgomery, environmental control manager for the city of Oxnard. “Yet the ocean is still pretty polluted and it’s coming from urban runoff.”

The new U. S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations aimed at local governments require a two-part approach. In the first phase, cities and counties must develop an inventory of their storm drain systems, detailing where they begin and where they run into the sea.

The second part calls for an analysis of the contaminants contained in the waterways and a plan to reduce the contaminants “to the maximum extent possible.”

Because a storm can generate huge volumes of water that would be expensive--and some say impossible--to treat, officials say a strong public education program to head off pollution at the source may be the best solution.

“People have to be educated that you don’t back up over the curb and open your crankcase into the catch basin--and people have done that,” said Alex Sheydayi, deputy director of Ventura County Public Works. “They have to be educated that it all ends up at the beach.”

Other suggestions to reduce the amount of pollutants dumped into the system include more frequent street sweeping and catch basin cleaning, and more opportunities for residents to dispose of household hazardous waste free of charge.

“It’s taken us 100 years to get to the point where we are polluting our rivers and ocean like this,” Sheydayi said. “It will take us many years to get out of it.”

Sheydayi heads a countywide effort to comply with the new EPA regulations that require cities and unincorporated county areas to apply for runoff permits individually. Each must create separate plans to reduce pollution.

But Sheydayi hopes to persuade the State Water Resources Control Board, which is charged with enforcing the program and granting permits in California, to allow Ventura County and its 10 cities to apply for a new permit as a single entity. That would save a considerable amount of money for the cities and the county, Sheydayi said.

Los Angeles County and its cities applied for and received a similar permit last year, authorities at the state water board said.

If Sheydayi is successful, Ventura County will apply for one storm drain discharge permit, with each of the cities submitting their portions of the application on a phased-in schedule.

Oxnard--the county’s biggest city--had to submit information about its drainage system last month. Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley--numbers 2 and 3 in population--are expected to submit information on their systems by next May.

Some regulators, however, worry that the EPA standards are too stringent. They say the only way to reduce pollutants to the “maximum extent practicable” may be to build prohibitively expensive treatment plants for storm water runoff.

But Sheydayi said the regulations are still new and in flux. He said he believes that the language will be altered to require only “best management practices,” a general term meaning the best treatment that is economically feasible.

Representatives of the environmental community said the new regulations are too weak and too long in coming.

“Storm drain runoff is the largest source of pollution to near-shore waters,” said Roger Gorke, a research scientist with Heal the Bay, a Santa Monica-based nonprofit organization. The storm drains must be cleaned up immediately, he said. In Santa Monica, he said, environmentalists are working with the city to divert storm drains to a treatment plant.

But Mark Capelli, executive director of Friends of the Ventura River, said the new regulations are a good first step.

“At least these new regulations are a formal recognition that storm drains are a major source of pollution both in the coastal watershed and in the near-shore waters,” he said.

Capelli said the new regulations, however, wrongly exempt agricultural runoff, a major source of pollution in Ventura County waterways. He said runoff from agriculture must be included in future revisions of the regulations enforcing the Clean Water Act.

“It’s inevitable that agriculture will eventually be regulated because they will find that it’s a major source of pollution and it simply cannot be ignored,” Capelli said.

The State Water Resources Control Board’s 1992 Water Quality Assessment showed that three bodies of water in Ventura County had pesticide levels high enough to rank them as impaired--the worst rating given in the assessment.

Those cited were Calleguas Creek and the Revolon Slough, which drain agricultural areas in the east county, and Mugu Lagoon, the county’s largest marine wetlands and wildlife sanctuary. All were targeted for cleanup by the EPA.

An EPA spokeswoman said last week that the agency had begun studies on some of the waterways on the list, but had not begun work on any Ventura County bodies of water.

Tips on Reducing Pollution

To reduce pollution from storm drain runoff at Ventura County beaches:

Household waste: Do not pour paint, oil or other household wastes into gutters or storm drains.

Lawn treatment: Do not apply fertilizer or pesticides to lawns when rain is expected.

Over watering: Do not over water the lawn.

Excrement: Do not dump animal droppings in barrancas, gutters or other storm drains.

Gutters: Reroute roof rain gutters so that they drain onto grassy areas, instead of onto the driveway and out to the street.