Inadequate water agency rules won't protect the Bay

A governmental agency made a decision May 11 that will affect everyone who lives in the Bay Area, especially those who depend on the San Francisco Bay and our creeks for recreation and livelihood. This agency, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, is responsible for protecting water quality throughout the Bay Area. It has long acknowledged that storm water pollution is one of the Bay's most serious problems, and it approved a permit that is supposed to reduce the trash, metals, and bacteria that run off into the Bay from city streets every time it rains. Unfortunately, the agency's plan is deeply flawed and isn't going to solve the Bay's serious storm water pollution problems.

The most egregious flaw with the regulations, called the Municipal Regional Storm Water Permit, is that they don't require cities to monitor the storm water that empties directly from their discharge pipes into local creeks and the Bay. (That is, no cities are required to monitor except for the two — Mountain View and Sunnyvale — that San Francisco Baykeeper is currently suing for serious pollution violations after we caught them contaminating the Bay with bacteria.)

That lack of monitoring is astonishingly derelict for a region that prides itself on being an environmental leader, yet is ringed by storm water and sewer systems that are failing because they're nearly 100 years old.

By not requiring the most basic water quality monitoring for bacteria and other pollutants, the board has decided that it doesn't really matter where the pollution in the Bay is coming from or who the problematic polluters are. The agency is fundamentally saying that some level of pollution is allowable, and it's also disregarding the fact that some communities may be more exposed to harmful pollutants than others.

At Baykeeper we believe that no amount of preventable pollution is acceptable, and I'm guessing that most people living around the Bay Area feel the same way. Why should our communities be forced to live around a polluted Bay when local government agencies can do more to improve water quality?

Our field scientists regularly patrol waterways around the Bay and take samples of storm water discharges from city outfalls. We know firsthand that storm water pollution from cities is a problem, and that this data can be collected easily. It shouldn't be the responsibility of a non-profit environmental watchdog to do the job that our local water agency and cities should be doing.

There are other problems with the permit as well. For instance, it calls for zero trash in the Bay, which on the surface sounds like a worthy goal. But the permit doesn't actually create any programs or incentives for cities to take that goal seriously. According to the permit's terms, “zero” isn't actually defined as “zero trash;” it means no trash in excess of the levels set before 2014. Throw in a whole slew of credits and exemptions, and the zero-trash goal is meaningless. In fact, most cities around the Bay could already claim to have met the zero-trash target as outlined in the new permit, but we can all clearly see that the Bay's shorelines are trashier than ever.

Now that the Regional Water Board has adopted this inadequate permit, despite our advocacy to improve it, we will ask the governor's State Water Board to intervene and use its oversight authority to require actual protections for the Bay. Our Bay Area permit should be at least as comprehensive and stringent as the storm water standards set in Southern California's coastal urban areas. Anything less is unfair to our Bay, and to all of us who live, work, and play around its shorelines.