EDITORIAL

The city’s battle against urban runoff and closed beaches took a

high-tech and promising turn this month with the announcement of a

$660,000 campaign to pinpoint far more accurately where the city’s storm

drains are and how runoff flows through Surf City.

The project, which is being paid for with Proposition 13 money, will

incorporate both the Global Positioning System -- the series of

satellites used for navigation and locating objects -- and the Geographic

Information System -- a computer system that will enable city officials

to study details of the storm drain system. Using both, officials will be

able to track sewage spills and, even more importantly, follow runoff

through the city that starts where people wash their cars, where

restaurants empty grease traps and where other pollutants initially make

their way into the storm drains.

It is the first time the city will do its own water-quality sampling,

historically in the hands of the Orange County Health Care Agency. If all

goes well, this also is a promising change -- the watchdogs of our water

will also be the ones who live with the consequences of failure.

Those consequences have been all too often detailed -- months of

off-limits surf, flagging business, dried-up tourism dollars. The promise

of success should be no less trumpeted: Clean water will make everyone’s

life in Surf City better, healthier and, yes, happier.

Having taken this laudable step, city officials owe it to residents to

do all they can to achieve that goal. They should be quick to provide

details of what they find, including any news that may be bad because

this fight, as the study is almost sure to find, begins in our backyards.