Now to be honest, I am not the kind of girl who is usually whipped into a verbal frenzy by topics like storm-water runoff. That was before I read the article that informed me that storm-water runoff is ....kind of a big deal. Each of Ventura County's 330,000 households could potentially be paying $400 dollars a year to reduce the trash and pollution flowing through storm drains into our rivers, lakes and ocean. For 35 years, Americans have concentrated on making waterways and oceans cleaner through the federal 1972 Clean Water Act. But the law primarily targeted only traditional sources of pollution from factories and sewage facilities and so in 1987, Congress started focusing on municipal storm-water runoff. Just recently, Ventura County’s storm-water permit has expired. This is my county, guys and this fact puts this issue in perspective for me. It will be the first lucky county in California to face strict new regulations on keeping pollutants out of storm drains. Get ready for this: Cost estimates for 75 new or additional proposed requirements range from 60 million a year to 140 million a year. Who knew that all that crud in the streets could be worth that much?!! The icing on the cake: there is no additional government revenue to pay for them. Local government officials are freaking out about this price tag.
Nevertheless, they assured the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board that they are committed to reducing storm-water pollution locally and to spending a reasonable amount of money to accomplish that goal. One of their major concerns was the generic nature of the permit, which has standards based on high-density areas like Los Angeles. This kind of a permit surely would not be able to take into consideration Ventura County’s agriculture and topography.
The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control board is certainly not wrong for wanting to make waterways healthier, in fact, I am quite proud to say that our government is paying attention to this particular environmental issue. However, tthe government must take practical steps to achieve that aim, in cooperation with local governments, if they plan to have any real success. There will be consequences of these unaffordable requirements that they are currently demanding, unintended as they may be, and these need to be looked at carefully. When the money isn’t there…it just isn’t there. There is no way around that. The focus of the storm-water issue is thus misdirected and a shift must take place very soon. The focus should not be on spending millions of dollars into treating the effects of storm-water runoff; it should be on reducing the sources of the pollution in the first place.
Bottom line: that crap did not get there by itself. It had help from that small group we fondly call Americans. You know when your parents’ insistence that you clean your room takes on new meaning as soon as they threaten to take away some important privilege. I’m gonna be your parent for just a second: I've asked you to clean up your trash and you have completely ignored me and so the problem has reached an al-time high level of disgusting. Now I'm gonna have to play the mean-mom card: Clean up your trash or give me $400 of your hard-earned money a year. The choice is up to you as always, but I'd think about this one carefully. I think the inner conflict with this particular issue is that you cannot blame the people who are trying to get this issue fixed, because who wants nasty water all around them. That being said, these measures just seem terribly expensive. A middle ground must be found regarding the Storm-water runoff issue.
No comments:
Post a Comment