LABS has posted a new set of videos on CWEA’s YouTube site. The hour-long six-part series is a recording of its April dinner meeting, which featured Sam Espinoza from the LA Sanitation Districts of LA County speaking about wastewater collection system operation and maintenance.
Comment on this post and let us know what you think. Does your workplace allow access to YouTube? Are the videos useful for information sharing? Want to provide footage of your events or tours of your facility?
Water, along with plastic bags and other trash, rushes head-on into a metal stormdrain gate that will soon be installed in 16 cities upstream along the Los Angeles River. Credit: Long Beach Post
About 12,000 metal gates will be installed at the opening of stormdrains in sixteen cities that empty into the Los Angeles River, as a measure to reduce pollution that accumulates in the river and ultimately, the Pacific Ocean and the coast of Long Beach.
By: Wendy Wert, LABS Vice President
On July 22, 2010, the California Water Environment Association (CWEA) Los Angeles Basin Section (LABS) presented an overview of Los Angeles County’s Stormwater Monitoring programs. The featured speaker was Oliver D. Galang, P.E., Section Manager with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works’ Watershed Management Division. Oliver described the Los Angeles County’s existing National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Stormwater Program and provided an update of efforts to modernize and expand these into a systemwide water quality monitoring system.
California beaches violated water quality standards fewer times than usual last year. That’s a key finding of a national report the Natural Resources Defense Council released this morning. The conclusion isn’t as good as it may sound.
Beaches in the Golden State tested dirty less often than before – particularly in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties – because testers sampled for bacteria at state beaches less often than before. “It’s really a case of ‘what you don’t look for, you don’t find,’” says Noah Garrison, a lawyer for the NRDC.
He adds that the culprit is a shrunken state budget. “We’re simply monitoring the beaches less. Often that’s in the wintertime, but that’s still a concern because people really visit the beaches year-round in California,” he says.
Ventura County cut sampling in the winter and spring; Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties saw around 60 percent drops in frequency. Some beaches Orange County used to test daily were tested weekly; overall Orange County’s testing dropped by a quarter. Los Angeles County recorded a 38% drop – not as bad as it could have been, Garrison said, mainly because regional water regulators have required sampling as a top priority.
In winter months, stormwater sends bacteria into the ocean as rainfall carries more pollutants into drains. But even in summer months, Garrison says water quality wasn’t necessarily improving. “During summer months the percent of samples that did not meet bacterial health standards for L.A. County and for Orange County remained about the same as it was in 2008, or in many cases actually was worse,” Garrison says.
The NRDC report points out that known sources of contamination at California beaches are a tiny fraction of the total. Unknown sources make up three-quarters of reported contamination; “no data” counts for 13 percent more. That could be stormwater, or sewage; nobody knows.
Some of the dirtiest beaches are the usual suspects: Surfrider Beach in Malibu, Santa Monica State Beach near the pier, Cabrillo Beach, Newport Bay. Garrison says beaches popular with tourists and locals are vital to the coastal and state economy. “To be allowing them to become a public health threat where not enough monitoring is done so people don’t know whether the beach they’re swimming at is safe for them to be in the water at, we really can’t continue that practice and hope that our economy will continue to thrive,” he says.
Federal stimulus money has followed this logic. In Hermosa Beach, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the city 1-and-a-third million dollars to reduce and clean stormwater runoff at Pier Street. The project includes a greywater component; wastewater will be recycled to feed plants in a pedestrian park at the area.
To learn more about the NRDC report, please join us on September 16 for a LABS luncheon with Senior Attorney David Beckman from the NRDC for a discussion of triple bottom line solutions that address regional stormwater from an inclusive perspective.
During the rainy season, the city of L.A. sends 100 million gallons of untreated runoff into the Pacific Ocean.
Tuesday, the city’s engineering department signed off on six standard plans that can be used to prevent some of the flow coming from parkways, highways, alleyways and cemented curb areas and divert it into the ground where it can recharge groundwater and prevent pollutants from reaching waterways. The plans give specific guidelines for installing swales, vegetation, permeable pavement and other systems to prevent storm water from flowing over nonporous surfaces into storm drains.
“What we’re trying to do here is take storm water or urban runoff and infiltrate it in streets or alleys and make it consistent so that people aren’t frustrated with trying to do something innovative,” said Gary Moore, engineer for the city of L.A. “We’ve developed standard plans, we’ve done the details, we’ve done the engineering to enable the city or a developer to use the plans to implement the desired solution.”
Developed in partnership with the city’s Board of Public Works, Bureau of Sanitation and Bureau of Engineering, the standard plans have been in the works for six months and will be available for free online starting July 9 at http://www.eng.lacity.org.
“There are more than 6,500 miles of streets in Los Angeles,” Moore said of the plans that will be used for street reconstruction, street widening, landscape medians and other projects. “There’s a lot of potential.”
Moving aggressively forward to improve water quality and protect public health at the world-renowned Paradise Cove, the City of Malibu today hosted a beach party and picnic to celebrate the launch of its Clean Ocean Project, an innovative facility to capture, clean and disinfect stormwater and urban runoff before it reaches the Pacific.
Join us for our next LABS dinner and presentation on Thursday, July 22 at 6pm!
Our featured guest is Oliver Galang with the LA County Flood Control District!
Photo: LA Team Effort
The keyword is “We”… the collaboration between the Mar Vista community and LA Stormwater set the bar for what is possible when the community gives up the ‘why don’t they…’ attitude and works with the city towards a greener LA! Read more
LOS ANGELES (CN) – The Natural Resources Defense Council will seek a court order requiring Los Angeles County to drastically reduce runoff pollution in the wake of a federal court ruling that found the county allowed runoff to pollute the waters around Malibu’s Surfrider Beach and other sensitive coastal areas, the group’s attorney said. Read more
After 20 years, the City of Los Angeles’ stormwater program is at a crossroads.
A message from Mark Gold, Executive Director of Heal the Bay
