Photo by Eric Parsons

Chris Palmieri, a Ventura streets supervisor, crouches near one of the storm drain outfalls along Ventura Avenue. The city has joined a program to test trash excluders, screens put over drains to capture runoff that would otherwise end up in the Ventura River estuary.

Photo by Karen Quincy Loberg

A stainless-steel screen filters trash from a catch basin. The $1,000 devices are part of an effort to contain runoff.

A noxious cluster of trash — plastic-foam containers, cigarette butts, greasy fast-food wrappers, a rotting potato — was on a crash course for the Ventura River estuary.

But it never made it. Instead, the refuse was trapped inside an underground catch basin by a "trash excluder" — a stainless-steel screen with holes no larger than 5 millimeters fastened over a runoff pipe leading to the river.

The custom-made devices, which cost about $1,000 each, are Ventura's newest, low-tech effort to curb the growing volumes of urban debris that mar wetlands and spoil water quality.

"It's amazing how well these contraptions work," Chris Palmieri, a city streets supervisor, said moments after he removed a sidewalk manhole, revealing two wheelbarrow loads of waste captured by the new screen.

Ventura has installed five excluders along Ventura Avenue as part of a pilot program to test their effectiveness. The trash will remain captured in the underground basin until later removed and recycled or taken to a landfill.

Some predict the units could be the first of dozens, possibly thousands, installed across the county in response to tough new regulations intended to keep trash, bacteria and other pollutants out of local waters.

Disgusted by the volume of trash and pollutants that reaches area waterways and the Pacific Ocean, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board has proposed the aggressive new regulations for storm water.

The regulations, to be shared by county government and all 10 cities, remain in draft form and likely won't be finalized until October at the earliest.

Ventura officials agree something should be done about the trash. But they, like others in the county, would prefer the flexibility to chose how to best handle the trash situation in their communities.

"I think putting them (the excluders) in high-trash areas makes a lot of sense," said Vicki Musgrove, Ventura's maintenance services and utilities manager, who oversees the city's storm water program. "We just want to make sure we're spending our limited funds in a way that actually improves water quality."

In Oxnard, officials use a combination of nets with 5- millimeter holes and floating booms on major water channels and rely on youth volunteers and city crews to clear out drains and other high-trash areas.

The city of Thousand Oaks has installed metal screens across inlets at street level. The inlets are cleared during regular street sweeping, officials said.

Ventura spent $2,000 on the excluders, negotiating to get five for the price of two, Musgrove said.

Ideally, people and businesses wouldn't litter. But until behaviors dramatically change, the excluders are gaining popularity as an effective, relatively low-cost method to keep trash from reaching the sea, said Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay, a Santa Monica-based environmental group. The city and county of Los Angeles have installed more than 40,000 of the units, he said.

"They are becoming popular because they are easy to install and relatively cheap," he said.

But he was quick to warn of the drawbacks. "The one downside is that people need to be aware these devices are not the panacea to rid all our pollutions," he said. "The most harmful stuff is often not what you see."

Pet waste, fluids dripping from automobiles, household chemicals, lawn fertilizer and garden pesticides often spill into runoff systems as rain falls on streets, sidewalks, roofs and other impermeable surfaces that cover most of the land in urban areas.

Last year, Ventura removed nearly seven tons of urban trash and metals from some 1,700 street inlets around town, said Ray Olson, superintendent of the city's environmental services program.

An additional 16 tons of natural material, mostly leaves and sediment, also were sucked out of the city's storm water system during an annual cleaning effort, he said.

The Ventura River estuary has been targeted as an impaired waterway, a big reason the city chose to place its five excluders near commercial and industrial areas along Ventura Avenue, he said.

"Litter harms the river ecosystem, everyone knows that," Olson said. "These excluders will cut down on the trash reaching the river. But for now, there are only five, so it's going to take everyone doing their part."