> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Erasing the waste is a multi-million dollar clean up - URL: https://www.smdp.com/erasing-the-waste-is-a-multi-million-dollar-clean-up/ - Published: 2004-07-05T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T04:41:53.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Environment, Santa Monica, #archive-import *$5 million education campaign will launch next month* *By SHRADDHA R. JAISWAL Special to the Daily Press* With millions of people visiting and living near the Santa Monica coast each year, millions of dollars must be spent cleaning up after them. And millions more are now being spent to educate people on how to stop their trashy ways. The second phase of a two-year, $5 million campaign will launch in August to teach coastal residents how to keep their waters unpolluted. The program, “Erase the Waste,” which is funded by the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB), is geared toward protecting the ocean, bay and city waters from seemingly innocent acts that create pollutants which go directly into storm drains. “Part of it’s getting people to understand first that whatever you throw in the street or leave in the street goes directly to the ocean,” said Richard Katz, a member of the SWRCB. “It doesn’t get treated somewhere, it doesn’t get picked up by somebody, it doesn’t get sorted.” Erase the Waste attempts to remind people of how their actions can result in devastating consequences. Pesticide use, the improper disposal of motor oil, or leaving behind dog feces on the beaches and streets, along with cigarette butts, can cause millions of dollars in damage, beach closures and viral infections like hepatitis, according to the campaign’s research. When pollutants flow in to the city’s storm drains, officials said it mixes together to form a type of “toxic soup” that eventually finds its way into the Santa Monica Bay. “It’s one of those issues where many people don’t realize the consequences of their actions,” Katz said. “People don’t even think about ‘Oh, it’s a cigarette butt, or it’s a styrofoam cup.’ They don’t think about a million other people doing the same thing in a month.” The city of Santa Monica annually spends up to $5 million to manage urban runoff. It collects about 12 tons of trash each year from storm drain catch basins and other devices, said Neal Shapiro, Santa Monica’s administrative analyst in the Environmental Programs Department. One of the city’s innovations to help purify storm water was the $9.5 million treatment facility which opened in December, 2000\. The Santa Monica Urban Runoff Recycling Facility (SMURRF) treats an average of 500,000 gallons of urban runoff from the city’s two main storm drains each day. The facility removes pollutants such as oil, animal waste, plastic material, bottles and anything else that is picked up when rain washes the streets. Shapiro said the facility has pulled out items as exotic as plastic balls from McDonalds, chunks of concrete and even the occasional car muffler. The city conducts tours through SMURFF to educate the community. A new city-sponsored program works with schools, neighborhoods and businesses to “Adopt a Catch Basin.” The new program will place a device in a storm drain to collect trash and volunteers will watch over the basin. When there is a problem, the city is notified. Although the city has no direct association with the Erase the Waste campaign, it has similar goals of keeping the ocean and area streets debris-free. “Through the education campaign and through the neighborhood organizing campaign, we’re hoping people will take responsibility and take action in their community to make their neighborhood a better place to live,” Katz said. For Santa Monica, the neighborhood consists of miles of sandy shores. The rainstorm not only washes pollution from the surface streets into the water, but the litter left along the coast also make its way into the ocean. “We get a lot of cups, bottles, cans (and) during the summer time, I get a lot of diapers and stuff like that,” said Paul Davis, a beach maintenance crew leader in Santa Monica. “And this (Fourth of July) weekend, there’s no telling what we’re going to get.” Although trash along the beaches is not news to any resident or the frequent beach bum, the Fourth of July usually leaves the sand castles surrounded with litter. “The fifth of July is the worst day of the year,” said Davis. “That’s why I’ve been trying to get them to change the (national) coastal clean up day to the fifth of July instead of the end of September.” Without the additional holiday weekend trash, the city picks up two to three tons of garbage on a daily basis, Davis said. Although the beach maintenance crew does their best, they are bound to miss some things along the coast, and those are what lead to beach closures. “We also have to remember that part of the reason so many tourists come to southern California is because of our gorgeous weather and our gorgeous beaches,” Katz said. “If our beaches are closed because of health threats, we’re also hurting the economy.” Funding for the Erase the Waste campaign comes from fines that are paid by industry polluters, Katz said. However, in the future, the SWRCB hopes to expand the program and join forces with corporate and city sponsors. “We’re hoping to take this to other parts of the state as well because LA is not unique in this problem,” Katz said. “It’s just like most things in LA, we’re bigger, there are more people, and we have a larg-er problem and that’s why we started here.” *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 5, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/070504.pdf?ref=smdp.com)