Water Board Orders Cleanup of Orange County’s Aliso Creek

A state water board has issued a cleanup and abatement order against Laguna Niguel, Orange County and the county’s Flood Control District for allowing high levels of urban runoff into Aliso Creek, one of Orange County’s most polluted waterways.

The three may be fined up to $5,000 a day and face lawsuits if they fail to follow the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board’s order, which activists had been urging for six months.

“I think it’s high time that somebody did something. I am very, very encouraged,” said Roger von Butow, chairman of the Clean Water Now Coalition and the Clean Aliso Creek Assn. “Some of these bureaucrats need a mandate from the people.”

Aliso Creek drains more than 34 square miles of Orange County, from the Santa Ana Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, bacteria, trash and chemicals are flushed from lawns and streets into storm drains and then into streams--and eventually the ocean.

The cleanup order focuses on the Kite Hill neighborhood in Laguna Niguel that sends 130,000 gallons of urban runoff a day into the creek, according to a city official. Activists say it actually spews 600,000 to 1 million gallons per day.

The regional water board found that the city, county and Flood Control District allow illegal discharge that severely impairs water quality. The order directs them to create a plan to clean up the discharge near that storm drain channel and submit the plan to the board by Feb. 11.