California Dump Truck Owners Association (CDTOA) - California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

Thank God it Only Rains 15 days a Year Here

By Mike Lewis

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board has taken a monumental step backwards in their efforts to control pollution from rain water in Ventura County. Using a public policy strategy discarded by other public agencies decades ago, the Water Board has opted for a program that will require virtually every new property owner to become responsible for large pollution pits that will be constructed in the yards of every new home. We cannot afford to have this policy extend to Los Angeles County when they renew our Storm Sewer Permit next year.

We know from past experience that expecting homeowners to properly operate and maintain backyard incinerators and septic tanks, only leads to bigger environmental problems that ultimately require the development of a regional collection and treatment system. Why the Water Board would pursue a 1950’s failed policy speaks to how little thought they have given to the long-term consequences of their decision.

By adopting a policy that requires that all rain water be captured by all new development and that it be done on each parcel, rather that at larger regional facilities, we can expect to see every new home constructed with a pit at least six feet square and six feet deep. That is the size necessary to capture the expected rain water from a typical storm in Ventura County. Commercial projects will require even larger pits. A ten acre site will require a hole the size of an Olympic swimming pool.

Every storm will send soil, leaves, fertilizer, weed killer, doggie droppings, trash, copper from vehicle brake linings, bacteria and other debris into this six foot deep cavern in everyone’s driveway. The environmentalists applaud this solution by insisting that this rain water will infiltrate into the ground and recharge the groundwater aquifer. That assumes of course that the homeowner keeps the pit clean at all times and the water is not leaching through a poison soup of pollution collected from storms over a period of several years.

Since there is no easy way to dispose of this hazardous material, one can expect that most homeowners will let the pit fill to the top or hope they sell the house before they have to deal with it.  The consequence is a legacy of poison puddles scattered throughout the county, and growing in number with each new development. It will probably be too late before anyone realizes that the threat of those poison puddles to the purity of the groundwater is real and urgent.

The taxpayers have already invested billions of dollars in an extensive flood control system to convey rain water safely away from development. It would make much more sense to modify that system to divert the rain water carrying this pollution to areas where it can be retained and treated on a regional scale or within the local watershed, and the resulting hazardous debris disposed of properly.

The Water Board’s parcel-by-parcel solution is doomed to fail just like those incinerators and septic tanks did.  We can only hope that this approach isn’t extended to other areas of the state and that the policy makers come to their senses before they set-back our rain-water pollution control efforts another 20 years. Then we can chalk up Ventura County as just another failed pilot project.