Water-quality cops could be coming to your neighborhood

June Casagrande

The city has hired three new staff members and installed a trailer as

temporary headquarters for its new water-quality and code enforcement

division.

The division is the main tool in an aggressive new program that

aims to stop pollutants from entering city storm drains.

But City Manager Homer Bludau said that, despite the division’s

hard-line goal, they’ll emphasize a soft touch -- especially at

first.

“We think it’s critical in early days that we don’t be heavy

handed in enforcement,” Bludau said. “Our goal will be to educate on

an increasing awareness about water quality and what causes bad water

quality and how it’s everyone’s responsibility to stop it.”

The three new staff members will join a revamped division that

includes code enforcement officers who are being cross-trained to

oversee water quality compliance. Together, working out of a trailer

just landed on City Hall grounds, they will continue to do the work

of the former code enforcement division but they will add

water-quality enforcement to their repertoire. They will patrol local

businesses and respond to calls to educate residents and businesses

alike about strict new county rules that make it illegal to put

anything but water into a storm drain.

For businesses, this means that hosing down sidewalks is now a

no-no unless the water is captured and kept out of the storm drains.

Technically, it also means that people can’t wash their cars in their

front yards using soap or do anything else that would send pollutants

into storm drains. The city doesn’t plan to crack down; instead,

they’re hoping that improved education can do the trick. But, whether

business or resident, gross abusers will be punished. Fines of up to

$300 a day could be levied against repeat offenders.

Bludau said that it will take about six to nine months for the new

division to be fully up and running, but that the water quality rules

already apply and code enforcement officers are already on the

lookout for opportunities to inform and enforce.

“It is going to require a mind-set change,” Bludau said. “People

do have an incentive to do things on their own to protect water

quality. People live in Newport Beach because they like to be around

water, but on the other side is the fact that people don’t like to be

heavily regulated.”