City awarded grant to improve ocean water

The city of Laguna Beach has joined with other cities seeking better control of irrigation systems to improve ocean-water quality.

Laguna Beach has collaborated with neighboring agencies to be awarded a special grant designed to evaluate the effectiveness of installing “smartimers” and edgescape landscaping to reduce nuisance flows to the storm system, City Manager Ken Frank said.

The Smartimer/Edgescape Evaluation Project, called SEEP, is a joint effort coordinated by the Municipal Water District of Orange County.

The smartimers will be installed in Riddle Field to benefit the shoreline water quality along Heisler Park.

The grant amount is $992,000, plus $588,439 in matching funds from participants, for a total project budget of $1,580,439.

Laguna Beach’s match will be met by providing installation labor and administrative support, rather than cash, Frank said.

The participating cities include Laguna Niguel, Dana Point, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Hills, San Juan Capistrano, Rancho Santa Margarita, Lake Forest and all of the water districts serving these cities.

Urban water diversion

In other water news, the city is building five new urban water diversion structures to remove pollutants from the environment by diverting water from street drainage and sending it into the sewer system instead of storm drains.

The city now maintains 13 urban water diversion structures.

Five new surface water diversion structures are being built. Most notably, the construction activity in the city employee’s parking lot on Forest Avenue at Laguna Canyon Road is substantially complete, Frank said.

Water diversion structures are also being installed on Cliff Drive, the end of Cress Drive and the end of the Laguna Channel at Main Beach.