The Long Beach Post - News, Life, Business, Sports

Long Beach Shores: The L.A. River's Dumping Ground

9:00am | The previous CityBeat touched on how the outflow from the Los Angeles River impacts beaches in Long Beach. Based on comments from readers, it is clear that people wanted more information about why Long Beach suffers so singularly from the cumulative upstream pollution discharged in to the Los Angeles River.
  

The Los Angeles River runs for 51 miles from its headwaters in the Santa Monica Mountains to its mouth in Long Beach Harbor.
  

The river originally followed an at-times meandering course but after severe floods in 1914, 1934 and 1938, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Los Angeles County Flood Control District constructed the concrete-lined structure we see today.
  

The river currently crosses 13 municipal jurisdictions (which includes 16 cities), each of which has individual authority over their land adjacent to the river. Counting both sides of the Los Angeles River, the cities of Long Beach and Los Angeles have the two largest sections of riverfront. Long Beach has 17.5 miles of Los Angeles River frontage and Los Angeles has 59.5 miles.
  

However, despite the amount of riverfront controlled by the various municipalities, the operation and maintenance of the Los Angeles River fall under the responsibilities of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
  

In addition, responsibility for monitoring water quality in the Los Angeles River is the job of LA County Public Works and the Regional Water Quality Control Board.
  

Since the late-1980s, interest has grown in redeveloping or revitalizing the Los Angeles River.
  

To this end, voters have approved more than a half-dozen propositions and bond acts providing at least some funding to river or storm water quality improvement projects. These include the LA County Prop A in 1992 ($540 million) and 1996 ($317 million), LA City Prop K ($299 million) in 1996, state Props 12 ($2.1 billion) and 13 ($1.97 billion) in 2000, state Props 40 ($2.6 billion) and 50 ($3.44 billion) in 2002, and the LA City Prop 0 ($500 million) in 2004.
  

Even without considering federal monies available, these state, county and city voter-approved measures have provided $11.8 billion between 1992 and 2004. While not all of this money was available for the Los Angeles River, each of these measures are cited by the City of Los Angeles as being significant funding mechanisms in the timeline for restoring the Los Angeles River.
  

Interestingly, other than several small projects, almost none of this money has been directed toward cleaning the water discharged at the mouth of the river in Long Beach.
  

Certainly many projects funded by the public funds have attempted to address pollution control further up the river (the City of Los Angeles is currently contemplating $650 million for Los Angeles River projects within their boundaries). And, some of these projects, like the installation of thousands of street-level storm drain trash collecting fixtures by the City of Los Angeles, have no doubt produced downstream results.
  

At a public meeting on the breakwater issue held Monday, Long Beach City Manager of Government Affairs Tom Modica said that even more upstream efforts are under way.
  

"Sixteen cities received $10 million dollars in the federal stimulus bill to put trash deflecting devices on every single storm drain in all the 16 cities in the immediate area that goes to the Los Angeles river," said Modica. "It won't solve all of [Long Beach's] trash issues but it will be a huge step forward."
  

On Wednesday, the Heal The Bay organization issued its annual report card on Long Beach beaches, finding that water quality at many had improved since last year--another indication that at least some of the upstream efforts are paying off.   
  

However, what appears to be missing is a single large-scale project, either proposed or considered, to deal with the cumulative river pollution problem once it reaches the mouth of the river. For all intents and purposes, the pollution that reaches the mouth of the Los Angeles River is only dealt with once it reaches the Long Beach shore.
  

As a result, the pocketbooks of Long Beach taxpayers are in essence being tapped twice for this pollution: once for the previous county and state ballot measures to help with water quality in the Los Angeles River; and second, to pay for cleaning the trash and pollution after it makes landfall on the city beaches.
  

So where exactly does all this pollution come from?
  

According to the "Characterization of Water Quality in the Los Angeles River" study conducted in 2000 that sought to identify sources of potential pollutants and measure water quality along the river, there are three primary sources of pollution in the Los Angeles River flow: discharge from three water reclamation plants, outflow from river tributaries into the river, and storm drain outfalls.
  

Conducted in what would be considered a fairly dry month, the study found that, "The three water reclamation plants discharged the majority (72 percent) of the volume flowing in the Los Angeles River during this study." This discharge was found to contain "the highest concentrations and greatest mass emissions of nutrients including nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, and total phosphate."
  

The study also found that 14 percent of the river's flow was from tributaries and 13.8 percent of the river flow was from storm drain outfalls. The study identified seven tributaries and 127 stormdrain outfalls along the river, of which 105 outfalls were flowing and 87 had sufficient flow to allow water quality measurements. Of the outfalls and tributaries sampled, it was found that 66 flowing storm drains and six flowing tributaries accounted for "the highest concentrations and mass emissions of bacteria including total coliform, E. coli, and Enterococcus."
  

It is worth noting that the three water reclamation plants, the tributaries and nearly all of the storm drain outfalls studied are each outside of Long Beach--with most located well upstream of the Long Beach city border.
  

The real kicker, though: under federal clean water laws it is essentially illegal to dump anything into "waters of the United States."
  

"Waters of the United States" is a federal government definition that includes waterways such as the Los Angeles River and its tributaries.
  

So, if discharging pollution into the river is illegal, how does so much pollution wind up in the Los Angeles River, and from there, onto the Long Beach shore?
  

Well, the same federal laws that make it illegal to dump into the nation's waters also allow for what amount to waivers.
  

Known as the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, the NPDES provides permits to industrial, commercial and municipal entities allowing them to discharge into the waters of the U.S.
  

To obtain a NPDES permit requires that any discharge must be mitigated in accordance with Environmental Protection Agency guidelines and using the best possible technology. However, the still-polluted effluent that is left is allowed to be discharged into waterways like the Los Angeles River without penalty.   
  

According to the EPA's NPDES database, there are 149 facilities (either industrial, commercial or municipal) in Los Angeles County that have a NPDES permit to discharge directly into river water, including the three reclamation plants mentioned earlier. Only 13 of these entities are within Long Beach city limits.
  

This is not to suggest that any of these entities are doing anything wrong--each are following federal law by obtaining a permit and at least under the guidance of the EPA rules, their discharge is reduced to some degree.
  

However, it is worth noting that in the past five years, according to the EPA, only two penalties have been imposed on the 149 LA County NPDES permit holders for being out of compliance with the permit standards. The total amount levied against the two firms? Just over $47,000 against one and $54,000 against the other.
  

For their part, the Army Corps says it is currently conducting an independent study on 32 miles of the Los Angeles River, focused on upstream waters located near downtown Los Angeles.
 In the mean time, the shores of Long Beach continue to be the dump for the rest of the basin's effluent--mitigated as it may be.  
  

So at the end of the day we have a major source of pollution for Long Beach that is managed by the county and the federal government, funded through taxpayer dollars that do not appear to come back to Long Beach, and a permitting system that allows companies and municipalities to discharge upriver with little impunity.
  

Is it any wonder, given these facts, that the current situation on the Long Beach shore exists? A situation one of the readers of the previous CityBeat readers described by writing, "I don't know who in their right mind would want to venture out into these polluted waters, without a full hazmat suit."
  

The bottom line is that billions of dollars can be spent cleaning the Los Angeles River upstream, but as long as nearly 150 industrial and municipal entities can dump into the river, the cumulative effect on Long Beach will remain high. The only realistic solution is to enhance the upstream efforts in conjunction with a massive effort at the mouth of the river.