A Middle Course for the Santa Ana River : * It Makes Little Sense to Try to Bring the Stream Up to the Purity of a Mountain Creek

The state and federal governments are involved in a fascinating and important dispute over the future of the down-on-its-luck Santa Ana River. Reversing the river’s fortune will take uncommon compromise and the setting of precedent. The good news is that it may be possible to accomplish this at a considerable saving in cleanup costs. The outcome for Southern California’s largest river matters for everyone.

The dispute hinges on the fundamental question of whether the waterway really is a river anymore, with so much of it drained, diverted and polluted. Even at its finest turns, this wanna-be waterway is little more than a man-made waste stream. The stream part runs for only about 25 of the river’s 100 miles, then it pretty much ceases to exist in Anaheim. From there, it carries on to the sea as a concrete ditch bearing some runoff and storm water.

Despite this identity crisis, the river made its way last year onto the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s national list of toxic streams, which meant that the standards for its cleanliness were elevated to those of every other waterway in the nation, including Lake Tahoe and Yosemite’s Merced River. Though this exalted company might be enough to boost the ego of any down-and-out river, the problem of cleaning up comes down to money.

The Regional Water Quality Control Board, an agency that enforces state water pollution, has been asking good questions. It wonders why a bundle should be spent to upgrade waste-water treatment plants so that they can bring the Santa Ana River up to the purity standards of a mountain stream. That could be very costly for those who pay household sewer rates.

Why not devise some lesser standard, because the river need not be like a trout stream to be much improved and to provide a recreational resource? It’s a good question.

The fact that there is so little natural water left ought to open the door to compromise. The federal government has asked the water board to produce cleanup plans for state water plants by the spring. But the way to some middle ground lies in a proposal from the water plants to conduct a study to see what the river’s uses are, and what amounts of metals fish can handle. This first-of-a-kind study might lead to acceptance of a special standard. EPA officials seem to support the idea.

Clearly, something needs to be done. But for the Santa Ana River, something less than perfection just may be good enough.