County’s Waterways Still Being Polluted, Study Finds

A new state report assessing the health of Ventura County’s waterways shows that many of the area’s lakes, rivers and streams continue to be contaminated with pesticides and other pollutants.

But a state board that oversees water quality says it will take a new approach toward finding a solution to the contaminated waterways.

Some of the pesticides that have turned up in the water were applied to crops up to four decades ago. Pesticides such as DDT and chlordane have long since been banned, while others found in the waters are still in use--though they tend to break down more quickly than their antiquated predecessors.

Other contaminants include urban pollutants like benzene and toluene, and bacteria from the fecal matter of humans and other mammals.

As in past years, the most contaminated group of waterways is in the Calleguas Creek watershed.

Tributaries pick up runoff from farms, cities and sewage-treatment plants before they feed into Calleguas and dump their polluted load into the Mugu Lagoon, where endangered birds live and forage.

The new report--known unceremoniously as the 303(d) List, will serve as a baseline assessment for troubled waters in the county, outlining those that most need federal dollars for cleanup.

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With that list as a reference, the California Water Regional Quality Control for the first time is developing water-quality management plans based on entire watersheds--rather than dealing with each source of contaminants individually.

“This is a new strategy on the part of the regional board,” said Wendy Phillips, chief of planning for the regional office in Los Angeles. “I hope it is a much more effective and efficient way of protecting water quality.”

Steve Evans, conservation director for the Sacramento-based statewide Friends of the River, agreed that managing an entire watershed is the only real way to protect water quality.

“Rivers flow in a linear fashion, so if you look at only one segment, you are ignoring what’s going on upstream or downstream,” he said.

But he expressed concern over whether the watershed management plans will really effect any change in pollution levels in the state’s waterways.

“It’s a good first step, but you have to make a commitment to move beyond that,” he said. “We can come up with great watershed plans, but if it doesn’t actually require people to take steps to resolve the problems, then it’s just a piece of paper.”

Phillips acknowledged that the plans will take time to develop and even more time to implement. Indeed, she says, there is no projected time line for completion of the plans and solutions.

Still, Phillips points to another key change in planning that makes this approach different. The plan includes property owners and others with a stake in the area, as well as state and local regulators in pinpointing problems and figuring out solutions.

“If someone is contaminating ground water or surface water with pesticides, we have the means of enforcement action,” Phillips said. “But it . . . is probably pretty impractical, which is why we are taking the watershed approach. We want to do this on a voluntary basis.”

The 303(d) List, an assessment that is periodically required by the federal Clean Water Act, details the contaminants in all waterways that do not meet state water- quality standards.

Officials caution, however, that the list is based on available information, and is not necessarily a complete accounting of all waterways and their pollution problems.

Under the new approach, the board will now issue permits, including those that allow discharges into rivers and streams, as a group. They will take into account the effects on the entire system of waterways, rather than examining each regulatory permit and its effects in a piecemeal fashion.

Instead of looking only to the permitted sources of water pollution, such as sewage-treatment plants or industrial dischargers, the board will now be looking at so-called non-point sources as well. Those include urban and agricultural runoff, dumping, trash, animal droppings and even the results of lawn care.

The board has already formed a panel of 40 interested parties for the Calleguas Creek watershed, and a group is forming for the Ventura River as well. An effort led by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is already underway to coordinate efforts to preserve the Santa Clara River, though the regional board will use that information to write its own plan as well. Other watersheds in the county will be assessed as time and budgets allow.

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Through the watershed approach, officials hope they can enlist the support of property owners and stakeholders to eliminate as much pollution as possible at its source, by cutting back on flood irrigation that flushes the banned pesticides out of the soils, or reducing the amount or toxicity of the pesticides they use now.

City and suburban residents might also be taught to use fewer pesticides on their lawns and to water more infrequently. The county has started a public education program to get people to stop dumping oil and other contaminants down city drains that feed into waterways.

Evans at Friends of the River and officials at the water board acknowledged that the problems are many and difficult. But they said, with the new watershed approach, they have a better chance of working toward a solution than ever before.

Phillips said the approach is still untried, and that there will surely be changes as the plans are implemented.

“When programs work, we’ll keep them going and when they don’t, we’ll modify them,” she said.