City of Ventura Environmental Services Stormwater Homepage
The City of Ventura bounded by four miles of coastline is committed to safe and healthy beaches, and protecting our natural environment. Presented with a variety of interest levels in mind, from resident to business owner, student to professional, we welcome you to the City of Ventura's Stormwater Quality Program website.
Using the Information Boxes located on the right, we invite you to explore this diverse topic: Safe & Healthy Beaches, Permits & Publications, Community for a Clean Watershed, Land Use & Water Quality Protection, Local Groups & Volunteer Opportunities, Kids & Classrooms, Media Room, Resources & Links, and "What Can I Do?".
Thank you for your interest in Stormwater Quality issues, for taking action, and for educating others about how we call all help. As with all Environmental Services Programs, we welcome your thoughts, ideas, questions and comments.
What is Stormwater?
Stormwater is a term used to describe water that comes from rain events. Stormwater that does not soak into the ground becomes surface runoff, which in Ventura flows through the storm drain system until it reaches the rivers or ocean.
Why be concerned about Stormwater?
Stormwater that runs off impervious surfaces (roofs, streets, parking lots) gathers and transports pollutants such as oil and grease, chemicals, nutrients, metals, and bacteria. Stormwater is not a treated water source, which means everything picked up along its path will be deposited into the rivers and ocean.
As stormwater flows across impervious surfaces, it is not percolating into the ground and replenishing underground aquifers. These aquifers are an important source of water to sustain our society.
Streams and other natural habitat can become overwhelmed by the greatly increased volume and speed of the stormwater flows, resulting in severe erosion and ecosystem impacts. These increased flows also increase the risk of flooding and necessitate costly flood prevention improvements.
The Don’t Dump, Drains to Ocean postings throughout each City within Ventura County is a continuing reminder that we all need to be concerned about stormwater. After all, the majority of these negative impacts can be reduced or eliminated altogether. For helpful water quality practices for Residents and Businesses, please visit What Can I Do?
How are the City of Ventura Stormwater concerns related to the County of Ventura Stormwater or Watershed?
What drains into a creek in Ojai, Santa Paula or Thousand Oaks will eventually find its way into a river, onto the beach, and ultimately, the ocean. With gravity acting as the constant pull towards lower elevation, stormwater travels over a host of surfaces and co-mingles with other shedding waters (hence the synonymous term, watershed). As stormwater moves, it picks up and leaves behind myriad (mainly) preventable things such as trash, sediment, pollutants, toxins, pet waste, bacteria and animal feces.
Contrary to popular belief, stormwater does NOT go through a municipal treatment process: What's in stormwater stays in stormwater. When Ventura experiences a Beach Advisory or Closure, for example, stormwater (also referred to as "urban runoff") is often the cause. Upon reaching the beach/ocean, if water sampling demonstrates concentrated levels of bacteria or pollutants that pose a threat to people and wildlife, a "posting" will occur due to these unhealthy/hazardous conditions.
For Current Beach Postings, Sampling Results and Sampling History
Because cities are vitally linked by water, every municipality, resident and business alike, have a direct impact on water quality. Since 1992, the 10 cities within the County of Ventura have worked collaboratively as Community for a Clean Watershed, to protect our watersheds by preventing stormwater pollution and to meet clean water regulations.
Community for a Clean Watershed
Community for a Clean Watershed is a coalition of stormwater quality management agencies in the cities and unincorporated areas of Ventura County that are working together to enhance, protect and preserve water quality in Ventura County water bodies using proactive and innovative ideas for preservation of biodiversity, ecological viability and human health. Working as a countywide team with public agencies, private enterprise, the environmental community and the general public, this group acts locally (per City and County) to implement Clean Water Act requirements, balancing the actions taken with social and economic constraints.
What Is The Clean Water Act and How Does It Impact Stormwater?
The Clean Water Act Clean Water Act is a U.S. federal law that regulates the discharge of pollutants into the nation's surface waters, including lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands, and coastal areas. Early efforts to reduce water pollution focused on traditional point source dischargers such as industry, and sewage treatment facilities. In 1987, Congress amended the Clean Water Act to address municipal stormwater discharges. All governmental agencies responsible for discharging water from any source, including the stormwater drainage system, into rivers or oceans, must meet the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) requirements of the Clean Water Act. The requirements are detailed in a NPDES Permit which outlines the specific actions under which agencies are "permitted" to discharge to waterways.
What is a Stormwater Permit?
In 1987, when Congress amended the Clean Water Act to address municipal stormwater discharges, all governmental agencies responsible for discharging water from any source (including the stormwater drainage system into rivers or oceans), were now required to meet the Federal Stormwater Program's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System or NPDES.
NPDES requires stormwater permits for point source discharges of stormwater from certain industrial activities and from large municipalities with a population of 100,000 or larger. Operating as a separate municipal storm drain system and discharging stormwater under the Ventura Countywide Stormwater NPDES permit requires specific actions be adhered to by the City of Ventura. In short, the NPDES Permit governs precisely how the City of Ventura is permitted to discharge to waterways.
For a comprehensive look at the DRAFT NPDES Permit
Current Permit Issues
In December 2006, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (LARWQCB) released a Draft 2006 Permit that may be the strictest in the nation. There are approximately 75 new or additional requirements identified in the Draft 2006 Permit. Ventura supports the intent of several requirements in the Draft 2006 Permit as they will lead to cleaner water and promote environmental sustainability. However, other proposed requirements are potentially counterproductive and prohibitively expensive, necessitating alternative approaches that still protect water quality.
Trash: The Draft 2006 Permit requires the installation of screens on all storm drain inlets preventing entry of any materials larger than 5mm. One-time installation costs could cost upwards of $2 million for Ventura’s 1,900 inlets. The Countywide Co-Permittees are requesting alternative language that would allow for a trash maintenance program to include additional litter pick-up, street sweeping, placement of additional trash cans in high commercial areas, and the installation of screens in storm drain inlets not prone to flooding.
Municipal Action Limits: The Draft 2006 Permit is the first in the nation to require that stormwater runoff from storm drains meet pollutant levels (referred to as Municipal Action Limits). Failure to meet these limits could lead to fines of $10,000 per day. The Draft 2006 Permit limits are based upon national averages of communities with much higher annual rainfall than we experience in Southern California. Consultants have indicated that 80 percent of Ventura's (a.k.a. The Program) storm drains will fail to meet the Municipal Action Limits contained within the Draft 2006 Permit. With the many pollutant sources in our communities, it is likely to be impossible to meet these levels without very expensive end-of-pipe treatment, particularly with sources beyond the Program's jurisdiction, such as schools and agriculture. The Program is requesting that Municipal Action Limits be used as an assessment tool rather than a compliance point. The Program is also requesting the limits be established based upon extensive Southern California data developed over the past 15 years.
Land Development: The Draft 2006 Permit includes extensive new requirements for new and redevelopment projects. The Program is concerned these requirements will make it more difficult to implement Smart Growth development principals, which provide a more environmentally sustainable way to build our communities.
Total Maximum Daily Load Program:The TMDL program, also mandated by the Clean Water Act, requires each state to identify waters impaired. If a water body is found to have beneficial uses impaired due to a pollutant, then a TMDL is required. A TMDL is developed by calculating the maximum amount of a pollutant a water body can receive and still achieve water quality objectives. Pollutant allocations are then assigned to each responsible party for their point and non-point pollutant sources.
What is a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL)?
A TMDL or Total Maximum Daily Load is a calculation of the maximum amount of a pollutant that a water body can receive and still meet water quality standards, and an allocation of that amount to the pollutant's sources.
Water quality standards identify the uses for each water body, for example, drinking water supply, contact recreation (swimming), and aquatic life support (fishing), and the scientific criteria to support that use.
A TMDL is the sum of the allowable loads of a single pollutant from all contributing point and nonpoint sources. The calculation must include a margin of safety to ensure that the water body can be used for the purposes the State has designated. The calculation must also account for seasonal variation in water quality.
The Federal Clean Water Act, section 303, establishes the water quality standards and TMDL programs.
Several TMDLs have been adopted (and many others are proposed) for the Calleguas and Malibu Creeks, Santa Clara and Ventura Rivers, and other coastal watersheds and beaches. For the first time, this Draft 2006 Permit incorporates TMDLs through the Countywide Stormwater Permit. The cost of implementing these TMDLs is not fully known, but based upon the examples of TMDLs implemented in other areas of Southern California the cost is estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars.
Cost: Based upon what Draft 2006 Permit requirements and what TMDLs are included in the final Permit, the total cost Countywide is anticipated to range from a high of $130 million to a low of $20 million. On average the Program is projected to cost upwards of $400 per household for the full compliance scenario under the Draft 2006 Permit.
For example, the City of Ventura currently spends approximately $1.2 million per year on an effective stormwater program that also complies with existing permit requirements. Early cost estimates project that number to rise to over $4 million annually to fund the proposed additional permit activities. Some of the activities include increased business inspections, development review and compliance, public outreach, storm drain inspections, reports and studies.
Currently, the primary funding mechanism to cover stormwater costs in Ventura County is the Watershed Protection District's Benefit Assessment Program. In Fiscal Year 2006-2007, the entire Program reported costs of approximately $13.5 million. Benefit Assessment revenues collected and distributed amounted to only $1.63 million (approximately 12 percent of cost) that year. The cost to the Principal Program (includes Program Administration and Reporting, Public Outreach and Water Quality Monitoring) for compliance with the Draft 2006 Permit is estimated to be $3.4 million (double the cost under the current permit). There is no available funding mechanism at this time to cover the additional or future costs for this program.
What are the next steps?
The Draft Permit is currently in a public development process, which provides an opportunity for all stakeholders to comment. The Ventura Countywide Stormwater Program, the Building Industry of America, the California Association of Stormwater Quality Agencies, Los Angeles County, Heal the Bay, and other cities in California are meeting with LARWQCB staff to discuss possible solutions and are submitting comments. The final Permit is expected to be adopted in June 2008.
How Can I Prevent Stormwater Pollution?
Many of our daily activities have the potential to cause stormwater pollution. Car washing detergents , lawn & garden fertilizers and pesticides, pool & spa chemicals, oil, gasoline, paint products and many more such items are potentially hazardous and/or life threatening to plant life, people and animals, and were never intended for our watersheds, beaches and oceans.
Take action today. Check out What Can I Do? (Residents and Businesses)
