Rob Varela / Star staff A woman riding her bike looks out to where a drainage ditch empties on to San Buenaventura State Beach at Sanjon Road on Wednesday.

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Tough new regulations intended to keep trash, bacteria and other pollutants out of local waters could cost Ventura County communities as much as $140 million a year, according to a preliminary estimate by the county Watershed Protection District.

That's more than $400 for each of the county's approximately 330,000 households.

The figure is the high end of a range of cost estimates developed by engineers and analysts trying to gauge the implications of a groundbreaking set of storm-water regulations proposed for Ventura County by the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The low-end estimate is $60 million. The wide range reflects the deep uncertainty associated with the new rules, which represent a significant departure from the way untreated runoff from city streets, yards, parking lots, housing tracts and businesses has been regulated in the past.

The rules, for the first time, would establish strict limits on the quantity of pollutants allowed into lakes, rivers and the ocean and levy steep fines against those who don't comply.

Local officials say they have few options for recovering any drastic increase in compliance costs. The county and cities collectively spend about $13.5 million a year on storm-water programs now. Part of that is offset by a countywide fee levied on property owners, which raises about $3 million a year, or less than $10 a year per household on average.

'At what cost?'

Increasing that fee would require voter approval, and local officials believe it would be difficult to persuade residents to dig deeper into their pocketbooks. Previous surveys have found that public support for such an increase drops below 50 percent when the fee exceeds $20 per household per year, said Jeff Pratt, director of the Watershed Protection District. "We know we need to do more," Pratt said, "but how, and at what cost?"

State Sens. Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch, and Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, introduced a constitutional amendment this year that would allow public agencies to increase fees for urban runoff management without voter approval, adding it to a list of exempted charges that includes sewer, water and trash fees. However, the bill, SCA12, barely made it out of committee. Even if approved by the Legislature and governor, it would have to be submitted to a statewide vote.

Absent voter approval of a big fee increase, cash-strapped local governments would have to tap existing budgets for emergency response, public works, law enforcement, recreation and other services to come up with the money for a heightened storm-water program.

That prospect is sufficiently alarming that all 10 Ventura County cities sent representatives to a workshop Tuesday on a new storm-water permit during the county Board of Supervisors meeting. City managers from throughout the county have been meeting regularly to plan their response, and speaker after speaker during Tuesday's session referred to the potential financial burden on their communities as "staggering."

"This is a tsunami," Pratt said.

The problem

Rain falling on streets, sidewalks, roofs and other impermeable surfaces that cover most of the land in urban areas runs off quickly. As it does, it picks up pet waste, fluids dripping from automobiles, household chemicals, lawn fertilizer, garden pesticides, and a flotilla of cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers, beverage containers, disposable diapers, plastic shopping bags and other trash.

In semi-rural suburban neighborhoods, manure from horses, chickens and other barnyard animals joins the mix. The noxious soup makes its way into local waterways and ultimately winds up in the ocean, where it threatens the health of swimmers and surfers and can damage aquatic ecosystems.

The volume of storm water, and the amount of contamination, is greatest during wet winter months. But the public-health threat is greatest in summer, when beach use soars. Even in dry weather, contaminants reach the ocean on a trickle of runoff from landscaping irrigation, pool and spa drainage, driveway car washing, sidewalk cleaning and other sources.

According to a research paper published last year in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, contaminated water at beaches in Los Angeles and Orange counties causes as many as 1.5 million cases of gastrointestinal illness each year, resulting in as much as $51 million in added medical costs.

Beach closures or warnings related to high bacteria levels also can have a direct economic effect in other ways. According to the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project, visitors from out of the area spend more than $1.1 billion in Ventura County each year, making coastal-related tourism a significant contributor to the local economy.

Urban storm runoff was among the last major sources of contamination to be regulated in the United States under the 1972 Clean Water Act, which initially focused on large, easily identifiable sources of pollution such as factories and municipal sewage treatment plants.

Only recently have federal water-quality regulators begun grappling with the much more difficult issue of controlling pollution from diffuse sources such as farm fields and urban storm drains, which typically do not feed into sewage plants.

"The old process is simply not working," said Kirsten James, a staff scientist at Heal the Bay, a Santa Monica-based environmental group. "Runoff is the biggest source of pollution to our waterways."

The new permit

Ventura County's storm-water permit, issued by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, is shared by county government and all 10 cities. In the past, the permit did not set specific targets for reduction of individual pollutants. Instead, it considered the county and cities in compliance with the Clean Water Act if they require government departments, private business operators, construction companies and developers of large commercial and residential projects to institute "best management practices" to control runoff.

This has meant adopting such strategies as constructing barriers to keep mud from flowing off construction sites, sweeping streets frequently, covering waste and chemical containers, constructing detention basins to capture debris in drainage systems, and installing filters or landscaped basins to capture and decontaminate runoff in new parking lots and new urban developments.

Rob Varela / Star staff A drain on Pierpont Boulevard in Ventura has a warning sign.

The persistence of pollution in the waters off Ventura County's beaches suggests a need for more stringent measures, according to state regulators and environmentalists. The data derived from weekly testing by the county Environmental Health Division shows persistent bacterial contamination at many popular beaches.

Agree in principle

In comments submitted to the regional board, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups argued that even the stepped-up enforcement specified by the draft permit does not go far enough.

The new permit, which is expected to be adopted early next year, goes much further than the old one. It would require increased monitoring of storm-drain outfalls and natural waterways. It would require cities to install screens on storm-drain inlets in commercial and industrial areas, as well as near schools, to trap trash before it enters the system. It would set numeric limits on the allowable amount of bacteria, heavy metals, nutrients and, in some watersheds, pesticides. Violations of those limits could lead to fines of up to $27,500 a day.

Ventura County would be the first jurisdiction in California — and perhaps the nation — to face numeric limits on storm-water pollution, Pratt told county supervisors during Tuesday's workshop.

The permit also would require cities to adopt new land-use regulations. Nearly all new construction — as well as redevelopment of most existing urban lots — would have to incorporate design and landscaping strategies to prevent virtually all runoff from leaving the property during storms.

The public works managers responsible for compliance generally agree in principle with the goals of the new regulations. It's the details that concern them.

Specific evidence

"Can we do better? Sure," said Vicki Musgrove, Ventura's maintenance services manager, who oversees the city's storm-water program. "There are a lot of good things in the permit that we need to do."

The proposed reductions, however, might not be immediately achievable, she said, at least not at a cost commensurate with the benefits.

"I do not think it's feasible right now," she said.

Michael Levy, senior staff counsel for the regional water board, said cost and feasibility issues are frequently raised during the permit process for municipal discharges, and the board considers them.

"Unfortunately, those who have raised these claims in the past have rarely submitted specific evidence that actually demonstrates the requirements are infeasible or cost-prohibitive," Levy said in an e-mail, adding the water board can help local agencies find grants or loans for storm-water improvements.

Compliance challenges

Planners and representatives of the building industry suggest the permit's strict requirements to reduce runoff from even small redevelopment projects might conflict with smart-growth strategies, which encourage high-density projects on existing urban lots.

Many of the design-related techniques specified by the regional board — such as setting aside areas to be planted with water-filtering vegetation — would be difficult to accomplish on small lots almost entirely covered by structures, they say.

Jason Redmond / Star staff Edgar Gonzalez, left, and Ryan Zgrabik, utility maintenance workers for the city of Thousand Oaks Waste Water Division, use a high-pressure water sprayer to clean out a storm drain on Avenida Verano.

"The conditions (in the permit) are so onerous it's going to severely limit redevelopment," said Mark Watkins, Thousand Oaks' public works director.

The focus on "end-of-pipe" limits for specific pollutants also makes cities responsible for pollutants that might originate outside their boundaries on farmland or rangeland, city officials say. It also might force them to consider extremely costly treatment facilities at coastal locations, rather than attacking the problems at the source higher in the watershed.

Ventura, for example, recently installed a pair of gates to shunt dry-weather flows in two storm drains — both leading to popular beaches and surf spots — into the city's wastewater plant for treatment.

The wastewater plant would be overwhelmed by high storm flows, so the gates must be left open in winter and provide only a partial solution to the year-round contamination problem. Still, the city spent $1 million to install gates on just those two drains, Musgrove said, and there are 24 more just like them.

"We know it's going to cost us money," Musgrove said. "We just want to make sure we're spending it in a way that really improves water quality."

If you go

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board will host a workshop on the proposed new Ventura County storm-water permit at 9 a.m. Thursday at Ventura City Hall, 501 Poli St. For more information, visit www.waterboards.ca.gov/losangeles/html/programs/stormwater/venturaMs4.html#workshop.

What is storm-water pollution?

Storm water is rainwater that becomes polluted, often from multiple, diverse land uses. Sources of storm-water pollution include driveways, streets, parking lots, lawns, construction sites, agricultural fields, failing sewer systems, and illicit discharges such as the dumping of waste motor oil. Pollutants found in storm-water runoff include heavy metals, oil, grease, sediment, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, bacteria, and trash. When it rains, these pollutants — without treatment — are washed through streets and storm drains directly into rivers and the ocean.

What is a storm-water permit?

The Clean Water Act is a U.S. federal law that regulates the discharge of pollutants into the nation's surface waters, including lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands, and coastal areas. Early efforts to reduce water pollution focused on traditional dischargers such as industry and waste treatment facilities. In 1987, Congress amended the Clean Water Act to address municipal storm-water systems. Today, all governmental agencies responsible for discharging water from any source into rivers or oceans must meet national pollutant reduction requirements of the Clean Water Act. The requirements are detailed in a permit, which outlines the specific ways under which agencies are "permitted" to discharge to waterways.

How are cities permitted?

Since 1992, the 10 cities in Ventura County have worked cooperatively with the Ventura County Watershed Protection District to meet clean water regulations under an award-winning, countywide storm-water program. Though the group collaborates, each agency operates separate municipal storm drain systems.