Residents to be polled about watershed plan
CITY HALL — Plans are under way to determine whether residents are ready to pay for an ambitious watershed protection plan intended to clean up Santa Monica Bay.
In December, the City Council approved a contract to complete a draft plan to improve water quality along Santa Monica’s coast over the next two decades. Brown and Caldwell, the firm assisting City Hall with the project, is finishing the $277,500 draft plan, which is set to go before the council on March 14.
The plan is a response to tighter regulations by the Regional Water Quality Board to reduce pollution in Southern California’s surface waters, including Santa Monica Bay. The regulations require each city to develop a plan to address how it will make its waters cleaner. The project would make Santa Monica compliant by 2020 with several environmental factors, initiating dramatic reductions in bacterial, chemical and solid waste that enter Santa Monica Bay through its stormwater system, according to city officials.
While city officials are supportive of cleaning the bay, there will be a considerable need for a new funding source for the project, they said. Capital costs alone could reach $95 million over a period of 15 years. In addition, operating and maintenance costs could at least double the current $36 annual stormwater fee homeowners pay, according to a recent staff report.
To secure funding, the council authorized city staff in December to explore whether a bond could be raised so the project can move forward. The cities of Santa Monica and Calabasas are set to undergo a joint polling venture in the next few weeks whereby residents will indicate if they are interested in cleaning the city’s beaches and coastal waters, and whether they’re willing to pay for it.
Councilman Kevin McKeown said Santa Monica has historically led the region in responsible stormwater and other outflow issues. The kind of cleanup imagined for the bay would be a further step in this tradition, he said, and it would require significant community investment to be successful.
“Many of us use the beaches and ocean regularly for recreation, and even more of us in Santa Monica value clean water as much as clean air,” McKeown said. “The council commissioned a study to evaluate public willingness to engage in a major effort to clean up Santa Monica Bay and the regional watershed.
“Clearly such an undertaking depends on community participation in a capital bond measure.”
If survey respondents are willing to pay for the project, the polling firms will help develop separate bond and grant proposals for Santa Monica and Calabasas, according to the staff report. The phone survey will be conducted by the Conservation Strategies Group and Fairbank, Maslin, Maulin & Associates. It will cost City Hall $25,000.
Craig Perkins, director of City Hall’s environmental and public works management, said that at the March council meeting, he will likely be discussing with elected leaders the financial options they can weigh before determining how to pursue the project.
Any bond measure to pay for the $95 million capital costs associated with the project would likely go before voters in November of 2006, Perkins said. One way to pay back bond debt would be to increase the stormwater fee from $36 to $100. Perkins said what’s attractive about this option is that a fee is already established, and increasing it may be better or easier than trying to establish a new district assessment or other tax. These options will also being considered, he said.
Perkins said he hopes to have the survey results available when he approaches the council with the plan.
“This discussion will be about the most cost-effective way to put these standards in place,” Perkins said.
The funding for the watershed plan project, including a possible increase of the stormwater fee, is not associated with other recent fee utility increases that went into effect in July, Perkins said. That’s because City Hall’s solid waste, water, wastewater and stormwater fund balances have been decreasing by varying degrees over the last four years and needed to be corrected in order to keep the bonds that support the funds in legal compliance, officials said.
In order to begin restoring the funds to a healthy level, the City Council adopted a rate schedule that increased the cost of water rates by 6 percent and solid waste rates by 10 percent citywide as of last summer. The new rates will be in effect for at least this year.
On Wednesday, Benjamin Grumbles, assistant administrator for water with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, will tour Santa Monica’s urban runoff recycling facility, as part of a water regulatory meeting being held this year in Santa Monica. The state-of-the-art facility is located at 1601 Appian Way, beneath the Pier.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 1, 2006. Read the original PDF.