Environmentalists say unlawful change to stormwater permit will decrease water quality

Last month, Guardacostas de San Diego y Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation (CERF) filed a petition to the California State Water Resources Control Board requesting changes to San Diego’s stormwater permit.

On Nov. 18, the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board approved an amendment to the municipal stormwater permit that weakens a permit holder’s accountability for achieving pollution reduction and clean water. Coastkeeper and CERF, which rely on the now-weakened provision to fight pollution threatening the region’s quality of life, say the permit is both unlawful and inadequate to protect the region’s water or public health.

“The regional board’s action… was an unfortunate step backward in efforts to improve water quality,” said Matt O’Malley, waterkeeper and legal/policy director for Coastkeeper. “We’re asking the state board to overturn the unlawful provisions to ensure our members and local citizens can access clean water and maintain the San Diego way of life that we love.”

Polluted runoff is said to be San Diego County’s number one water quality problem; it’s reportedly what causes the county Department of Environmental Health to issue 72-hour polluted beach advisories when it rains and what causes our local streams and rivers to receive poor health ratings.

To address that issue, the Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems permit covers cities in San Diego, along with San Diego County, the port, the airport and portions of South Orange County and Riverside County. It requires permittees within these areas to create and implement plans to prevent pollution in urban runoff and stormwater from reaching our waters. The plans identify priority pollution conditions, strategies to address those problems, numeric goals and timelines to achieve those goals.

But on Nov. 18, the regional board approved an amendment known as “Safe Harbor,” which gives permit holders a pass from accountability for water quality protection if they have a plan to eventually reduce pollution into our waters. They get this from the moment their plan is approved, and it continues indefinitely as long as they keep trying to do better, even if they continue failing to meet water quality standards.

“We don’t want to give water polluters a pass just for saying they will prevent pollution from reaching San Diego’s waters – we want to reward actual results,” says CERF attorney Livia Borak. “Our petition to the state board asks the governing agency to overturn this illogical and unlawful provision.”