Despite tremendous turnout from the environmental community, the L.A. Board of Public Works today delayed its decision on a staff-proposed Low Impact Development ordinance for at least another month. The Board voted 2-1 to postpone the measure, disregarding strong backing from Sanitation staff and the DWP. (Paula Daniels, the board lead on the LID ordinance, cast the dissenting vote.)

Many Green LA members, businesses, gardeners and landscape architects came out to support the reasonable and much-needed ordinance. But the lobbying efforts of the Building Industry Assn., the same folks that have opposed LID efforts throughout the state, succeeded at the Board level. The fact that the Regional Water Board earlier passed a Ventura County stormwater permit with a strong LID component fell on deaf ears.

The proposed ordinance calls for all significant new construction and redevelopment projects in the city to infiltrate or capture and use 100% of the runoff generated by three-quarter inch storms. In the event developers can’t comply with the requirements on site, they can provide offsite mitigation or pay an in-lieu fee to the city to fund LID projects like green streets and parking-lot retrofits.

The ordinance would apply to single-family homes too, but requirements would be minimal and could be met with rain gutter downspout redirection to landscaping and/or the use of a rain barrel.

Tthe development community made no new arguments. The usual “it is too expensive and it is too hard” pleas carried the day. Board members even questioned the adequacy of public review despite the fact that staff met with neighborhood councils and held five public workshops. The bottom line: The city got cold feet because of development community pressure.

The board failed to fully appreciate today that the LID ordinance marks the cornerstone of the city’s water-quality compliance master plan. City staff has put together Total Maximum Daily Load implementation plans that will cost well over $1 billion. And the LID ordinance is critical for plan implementation.

City officials can’t comply via water-quality standards alone. They need everyone’s help. The ordinance would result in dramatic reductions in pollutant loads, enhanced flood control, augmented groundwater recharge and greener communities. These are all tremendous benefits in their own right. But the city’s major compliance problems with water quality standards have also put taxpayers in a place of tremendous financial liability.

Remember Mayor Villaraigosa’s campaign promise to transform Los Angeles into the cleanest, greenest city in America? If the city wants to move from rhetoric to reality, leaders will have to approve the LID ordinance as soon as possible. Any further delay is unconscionable and puts the city at unnecessary risk of enforcement due to extensive, ongoing water-quality violations.

Last Thursday, Administrator Lisa Jackson announced the agency's...]]> 2009-10-19T11:08:00Z San Francisco Sewers Blog http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SanFranciscoSewersBlog/~3/iknBz9wMzio/good-question-penny-down-toliet.html
11 year old Chloe of San Leandro asked Channel 5 KPIX reporter Ken Bastida "What happens if I flush an object down the toliet?" Check out what a fun time one SF Sewer Guru had responding to this question at the Oceanside Treatment Plant near the SF Zoo.

Take a guess before you view and see if you get the answer right. The answer may surprise you... or maybe not since you are all such educated sewer fans!

LINK TO VIDEO

A new message beamed to you from the S.F. Sewer Galaxy.

Wetlands at Augustus Hawkins Nature Park

L.A. Creek Freak was happy to train and bike down to Augustus F. Hawkins Natural Park for a city of Los Angeles Low Impact Development (LID) workshop this morning.

The highlight of the trip was exploring parts of the park while it was lightly raining. I hadn’t visited the site since 2005, when I wrote about it as a side trip in my book. The 8-acre park is located at the intersection of Compton and Slauson Avenues in South L.A. – two blocks west of the Slauson Metro Blue Line Station.

The park opened around 2002. It incorporated some of healthy older trees already at the site. The older and newer trees have grown tall and stately. The park features a nature center, picnic area, and paths that wind and spiral through areas of restored native vegetation. The landscape has grown in a great deal, and looked really lush in the rain.

Today’s LID workshop, the last of four scheduled, had about 30 people in attendance, including representation from developers, architects, consultants and engineers, all trying to wrap their heads around the new ordinance.

The workshop presentation was by Shahram Kharaghani, the head of the city Sanitation Bureau’s Watershed Protection division. The description of the ordinance is pretty much the same as what creek freak described in this earlier post. Kharaghani asserted that the city is doing the new LID requirements in advance of them being required as part of the city’s stormwater permit, which is due to be renewed in 2010.

LID is anticipated to consist of an ordinance and a handbook, which Kharaghani stated would be on-line in draft form “soon.”Kharaghani stressed that LID apply to everything public and private, and that the rainwater features prioritized will be natural ones.

While slides showed a seemingly orderly flowchart decision tree, questions revealed the gray areas open to some interpretation. It’s not completely clear exactly how green roofs, treatment of off-site run-off, hillside development, single-family home best management practices (BMP’s) etc. will be handled, but perhaps the soon-to-be online documents can offer additional guidance.  It appears that the main bottom-line standard is the capture of that 85th percentile rainstorm on site.

Kharaghani anticipated that LID requirements would take effect approximately February 2010 – first they go before the Public Works board, city council and mayor for approval.