Caltrans Pledges to Curb Pollution

After a decade of battling environmentalists, Caltrans agreed in court Wednesday to install pollution controls on state highways to reduce the flow of toxic storm water into streams, rivers and the ocean.

The pact, reached after a year of negotiation with the Natural Resources Defense Council and Santa Monica BayKeeper, was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, where the two groups sued the state transportation department in 1993.

It sets the stage for installation of filtering devices that Caltrans once considered ineffective and too costly for its 15,000-mile highway system. Hundreds of projects, including new freeways and major improvements to older roads, could be affected.

“This is a major step toward a cleaner ocean, not only in Southern California, but throughout the state,” said David Beckman, an NRDC attorney based in Santa Monica. “One of the strongest opponents of cleaning up runoff is now committing to a progressive program that will reduce polluted storm water from highways by as much as 80%.”

Caltrans officials heralded the agreement, which could settle the lawsuit, as a sign that the giant transportation agency was willing to form new alliances with environmentalists to combat storm-water pollution. Recent studies showing the practicality of storm-water controls have persuaded the agency to try to resolve the case.

“We have been working in partnership for the past several years,” said Tony Harris, Caltrans’ acting director. “We are doing a tremendous amount of research and developing different strategies we can integrate into planning, construction and maintenance.”

Caltrans officials are still calculating the statewide cost, but have said that pollution controls in Los Angeles County alone could approach $5 billion. The NRDC considers that figure too high.

Runoff from roads, farmland, urban areas and industrial sites has emerged as the No. 1 threat to water quality in California, scientists say. Research shows that it is often toxic and can harm fish, sea urchins, shrimp, birds and microorganisms.

Storm water coming off highways can be a grimy mix of trash, oil, antifreeze, rubber, hydraulic fluid, exhaust particles, brake dust and microscopic bits of metal. It includes solvents, pesticides, fertilizers and human and animal waste.

Methods of controlling runoff vary from relatively simple devices, such as drain filters and screens, to structures with multiple chambers that remove sediment and debris from storm water before it flows into rivers or the ocean.

Some of the most common treatment methods are detention basins, sand traps and swales, which are roadside strips of vegetation that sift runoff before it enters a waterway or storm drain.

Such methods, NRDC researchers say, could remove 60 tons of pollutants a year from the ocean if the San Diego Freeway were fitted with storm-water controls along an 8.6-mile stretch from the Santa Monica Freeway to Los Angeles International Airport.

“It’s been a frustrating 10 years with lots of fits and starts, but Caltrans has come a long way,” said Terry Tamminen, head of the California Environmental Protection Agency and former executive director of Santa Monica BayKeeper. “We now have a fully realized program to prevent storm-water pollution from state highways.”

The agreement requires Caltrans to consider in good faith the installation of storm-water controls when planning new highways and put them in where appropriate.

For freeways that are already built, the department will use storm-water devices wherever feasible for improvement projects that involve more than 3 acres, such as widenings and interchanges.

Over the next two years, the NRDC will monitor Caltrans’ performance for compliance with the rules. Should a dispute arise that cannot be resolved by both sides, the matter can be brought to court.

If Caltrans is found to be in compliance after the review period, it will end the federal lawsuit the NRDC and BayKeeper brought against the agency.

The suit alleged that Caltrans had violated the Clean Water Act by failing to stem storm-water runoff from 900 miles of roads and at least 35 maintenance yards in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

After more than a year of hearings, U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie ruled against Caltrans, finding that the department had paid only “lip service” to the law until there was significant pressure to do more. Today, Caltrans’ L.A. division remains under Rafeedie’s supervision.

Over the last decade, the agency has lost federal lawsuits in Los Angeles, San Diego and the Bay Area that alleged violations of federal storm-water laws. In five cases, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has collected more than $1 million in fines and settlements. Critical evaluations also have come from state water quality regulators, the Federal Highway Administration and in-house reviews by Caltrans.

Agency officials said it had taken a long time to comply with the Clean Water Act because Caltrans is a huge bureaucracy, control methods were untested and funding for storm-water programs was not always available. “With the lawsuit, we realized the need to move at a faster pace,” said Gary Winters, Caltrans division chief for environmental analysis. “But it can take a while to get the resources and a whole new program in place.”

Caltrans and NRDC officials said they were encouraged to negotiate an agreement because of recent research they conducted together under court supervision.

The study of 38 sites throughout Southern California identified nine cost-effective methods to filter storm-water runoff from state highways. It is believed to be the most comprehensive research of its type.

“With the retrofit study, we now have devices that will work, that are fiscally responsible,” Harris said. “It will allow us to move on.”