Two California Cities Sue Water Quality Control Board
Source San Bernardino County Sun
The state body charged with keeping pollutants out of the Santa Ana River and its tributaries has been sued by Rancho Cucamonga and Upland, Calif., reports staff writer Conor Friedersdorf of the San Bernardino County Sun.
The cities are afraid that new regulations could cost them tens of thousands of dollars to implement.
In the lawsuit, the cities challenge a Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board decision that, among other things, would force municipalities across the region to inspect hundreds of business sites within their borders to prevent pollutants from running off-site.
"This broadens the scope of who has to be inspected by the city, but does not provide us with the resources to carry out those inspections,' said Duane Baker, Rancho Cucamonga's assistant city manager.
But Kurt Berchtold, a spokesman for the Water Quality Control Board, says the new regulations are needed to cut down on pollution that accumulates in urban runoff and plagues coastal waters by increasing bacteria and other pollutants.
"These regulations address some of the biggest pollution sources still affecting our waters,' Berchtold said. "These cities are not arguing that these regulations are not needed to protect the environment, but that we haven't jumped through the proper legal hoops to implement them.'
The new regulations mark a new effort in the clean water movement which, for years, has focused on major polluters like sewage treatment plants. The goal is to reduce pollutants that accumulate from thousands of individual business sites, including auto repair shops to heavy industry, and flow into urban runoff that eventually makes its way to the ocean.
Of course, focusing on thousands of small polluters requires significantly more resources than monitoring isolated big polluters, and both sides in the lawsuit agree that the new regulations will put more of a burden on cities.
City inspectors will be required to determine which businesses have the potential to pollute urban run-off, and to regularly inspect those businesses. For example, inspectors might have to visit an industrial site to make sure that chemicals are not stored outside in open drums, or that spills are not cleaned up by washing chemicals into the street.
"Cities argue that the agency is trying to pawn off its duties onto municipalities, and to some extent that is true,' Berchtold said.
"We don't have the staff to conduct inspections of all those sites with enough frequency, but we believe the additional cost to cities here is reasonable and justified.'
The cities also argue that the new regulations violate the state constitution by requiring cities to spend money on new enforcement duties but providing no funds with which they can do so.
Water Quality Control Board officials, however, said that provision of the California constitution does not apply to the new regulations because they are designed to meet federal mandates.
"We're a state board with members appointed by the governor, but many of our actions are taken to ensure compliance with the federal Clean Water Act,' Berchtold said.
In their lawsuit, the cities challenge the new regulations on a number of procedural grounds. They also note concerns that local control over land use could be limited, and that cities could be held responsible for the actions of private polluters.
Source: San Bernardino County Sun