In an effort to increase education and awareness of water quality and water pollution problems, a number of county organizations partnered up enlist the community in creative ways to address these issues.
The “Design for Clean Water: Stormwater Pollution Challenge” is a competition that invited people to come up with solutions to reduce stormwater pollution and improve water quality in San Diego. This partnership between Project Clean Water and I Love A Clean San Diego is awarding $2,000 microgrants (funded by BluPeak Credit Union) for the winners to develop their ideas, which will be featured during San Diego Design Week at I Love A Clean San Diego’s Coastal Cleanup Day on Sept. 21 at Liberty Station in Point Loma.
Paige Copenhaver is an environmental planner with the County of San Diego (Project Clean Water is a regional program between the county, all of the municipalities within the county, the San Diego International Airport, and the Port of San Diego), working on water quality issues in the region and watershed planning to keep local waterways clean, and keep oceans clear of stormwater pollution. Leslie Reynolds is executive director of Groundwork San Diego-Chollas Creek, a nonprofit founded in 2007 to help create a plan for the Chollas Creek watershed through an environmental justice lens. Copenhaver and Reynolds took some time to talk about the scope of stormwater pollution in San Diego County and potential solutions to help keep the water clean. (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. )
Q: The “Design for Clean Water: Stormwater Pollution Challenge” is asking teams to come up with solutions to stormwater pollution and improving water quality in San Diego. The water from rain, melted snow, or irrigation that doesn’t get absorbed into the ground, finds its way into local lakes, rivers, and oceans. When that stormwater makes with roofs, driveways, roads and sidewalks, and lawns it can carry the pollutants from those locations, like chemicals, waste, or litter into those bodies of water. How would you describe the scope of stormwater pollution in San Diego?
Copenhaver: Stormwater pollution is a pretty serious problem. In San Diego, we have a few main pollutants of concern. There are several watersheds here and they all have different pollutants that impact them more than others. So, in the more agricultural regions in the county, we have a lot of nutrients that are entering our waterways, and those are mainly phosphorus and nitrogen coming from fertilizer.
Then, bacteria is another issue in our waterways. Even bacteria from pet waste is huge. Whenever we have a rain event, there is always a big uptick in bacteria in our waterways that can be traced back to dog waste that gets left out on the ground from people not picking up after their dogs, so that’s a big problem.
Trash is another problem in our region, so that that one is pretty obvious for people to understand because you can visibly see trash, so you can see when it’s in the waterways. Also, like you mentioned, over irrigation. When people over irrigate their lawns or their gardens, their property, garden chemicals can wash down the storm drains, as well. That does include things like fertilizers and pesticides.
Another issue is people washing their cars in their driveway or on the street. Any of that soap that they use to wash their car, or any of the pollutants that were on their car (like dirt, pollen) anything like that can end up in a storm drain, so it’s definitely a big issue. There are a ton of different pollutants that we’re trying to really educate people about, their own impact, and how they can help.
Reynolds: I would want to speak from the perspective of the Chollas Creek watershed. It is one of the most compelling and concerning problems for our watershed, in part for its implications to our communities along Chollas Creek, and an even larger part for its implications for San Diego Bay. So, it is a clear and compelling problem for the s of San Diego Bay and the communities in the Chollas Creek watershed.
Q: So, for something like pet waste, one solution is people picking up after their animals instead of leaving the waste on the ground. What are the differences between washing your car at home and going to a commercial car wash? Does the commercial car wash capture the water?
Copenhaver: We definitely recommend people going to a certified car wash because you’re correct, they’re required to capture the water, and they recycle a lot of it, so they don’t dump it down a storm drain. If they are dumping it, they’re dumping it down a sanitary sewer system, which is disconnected from the storm drain, and that water is all treated, so that’s not going to end up as pollution. So, we definitely recommend people going to a car wash. There are also mobile car washing services that you can call to come wash your car at your house, and they put down barriers around your car so that the water does not end up as runoff going down a storm drain. Those (services) actually use significantly less water than a commercial car wash facility. Then, if people do have the option to wash their car on a grassy lawn or a gravel surface, then that’s OK too, as long as they’re keeping track of how much water they’re using. That water will seep into the grass or the gravel and will just go into the groundwater, so it’s not going to end up in in a storm drain. It’s not going to pollute our environment, so that’s a good option, as well, as long as they’re making sure it’s not running off of their property.
Q: What would you say are the root causes of stormwater pollution?
Reynolds: I would say that one root cause is urbanization. So, just as you aptly described how pollution occurs in the waterway, that is a result and part of urbanization. Secondly, there were earlier engineering solutions, like channelizing a whole system like Chollas Creek, which meant that the naturally functioning aspects of a waterway were not allowed to work. So, instead of things being absorbed into the ground and by the native plants that were once here, they’re instead sent rapidly and directly through the system and down to the bay. One of the things we work on now (and we have a $10 million project going on here in Chollas Creek that we’re building) is de-channelizing the creek so we can restore some of its natural pollution-abating functions, and then putting bioswales (like a vegetated ditch that helps collect and filter stormwater) and other pollution trapping, green infrastructure installations alongside the creek, so that the pollution that you actually described from urban runoff doesn’t reach the creek.
Q: In what ways does stormwater pollution pose a threat, or harm, to people and wildlife?
Copenhaver: People use waterways and the ocean to recreate, people go swimming and fishing and boating; when there’s stormwater pollution, people can’t get in the water. If they do, they have the potential to get sick. In San Diego, we always say don’t go surfing three days after it rains because the storm drains are connected to the ocean. So, after a rain event, all of the pollutants go down the storm drains and end up in the ocean. That makes the water very, very unhealthy to recreate in. So yeah, it’s unhealthy for people to swim in polluted water, to fish in polluted water. The other downside is when those beaches are closed, people can’t go play in the ocean and have fun.
As far as animals, different pollutants have different impacts on aquatic ecosystems. Overall, though, pollutants in general are not good for water quality. When water quality is degraded from pollutants, aquatic life-animals, fish, plants, everything in the marine and aquatic ecosystems-is harmed by stormwater pollution. That’s another huge reason that we really encourage people to take charge of their own impact on the environment because we want to keep our ecosystems clean and have healthy aquatic life.
Q: What kinds of approaches to this problem would you like to see?
Copenhaver: We really wanted to engage the design community in San Diego because we saw that there was an untouched potential. When we normally think of stormwater solutions, we usually think of these structural projects that we can put in under the ground and filter stormwater, or creating rain gardens that will help filter the rainwater. All of that is great and we need those solutions, but because we’re Project Clean Water and we’re all about education and engagement with the community, we really wanted to engage the community to empower them to come up with their own solutions that could help reduce stormwater pollution in a creative way that isn’t necessarily building a structural project that will help filter storm water. So, we invited individuals, design teams, college students, and anyone in the community to come up with creative solutions that would help to reduce stormwater pollution. We gave some example projects of what we were looking for, like public education campaigns, visual arts, and projects that would engage the community.
We put out the call for applications in July, got a few applicants, and we chose four winners who are working on their projects right now and they’re presenting them on Sept. 21 at Coastal Cleanup Day. Each of the winners will be awarded a $2,000 microgrant to work on their project. The winners are “ReFashion the Future: An Upcycled Fashion Show to Combat Stormwater Pollution” by Chris Carson, demonstrating how to turn textiles that have been discarded into new garments; “La Eco-Resistencia/The Eco-Resistance: A Sound Art and Multimedia Exploration of Stormwater Pollution” by Francisco Eme, using photography, video, audio, and a collection of artifacts to show how urbanization impacts natural spaces; “Nature’s Design: Trees & Stormwater Mitigation” by Elektra Fike-Data/Tree San Diego features a certified arborist leading an educational tree planting and stormwater mitigation demonstration; and “A Spoken Word Ode to Water” by Gill Sotu, featuring his performance of “Have you ever seen water cry,” a piece he created personifying water and exploring themes of neglect, pollution, and stewardship.
Reynolds: We’ve embarked on what’s called a Chollas Blue Green Collaborative Initiative. This initiative is to address all of these kinds of climate impacts which have to do with heat and flooding, water pollution, as well as air pollution and all of the things that are happening to communities through the coming climate crisis. With this blue green infrastructure approach, you look for ways to achieve as many benefits that residents need, rather than a single problem with a single solution. The climate crisis is too big and the community needs are too great to silo our approaches to problems, including water pollution. So, if you want to clean the water, put in floodable park that will improve the water quality before the water gets to the creek. Give a community a green space, or put in drought-tolerant landscaping to help families save money and clean the water before it gets to the creek. All of these kinds of things are providing all of these multiple benefits, and they’re not siloed solutions.
Q: What have been some ways that have been successful in increasing public awareness and engagement about stormwater pollution and water quality?
Copenhaver: One of the ways that we’ve been the most successful is through a campaign we launched four years ago called “52 Ways to Love Your Water.” It’s 52 because there are 52 weeks in the year, so the idea is that we provide people with one small action that they can do to help improve water quality every week of the year. These are really simple calls to action, such as going for a walk in the park and picking up three pieces of trash. Do a beach cleanup or use a reusable bag instead of a plastic bag when you go grocery shopping. Really simple things like that. Our whole goal with this campaign is just to empower people and help them realize that small actions really can help to make a big difference in the region, especially because there are so many people who live in San Diego. If everyone just did one little, tiny thing a week, we could make a huge difference.
We also do pretty big events, like we are a sponsor of the county fair, so we spoke with hundreds of people this year at the fair, spreading awareness about stormwater issues and that “52 Ways to Love Your Water” campaign. In order to win one of our swag items at the fair, we asked people to make a pledge to do one of those 52 actions to help reduce stormwater pollution. We can’t hold people able to their actions, but we hope that at least planting the seed of doing something good for the environment can help inspire them to actually do it.
