Trash in the Los Angeles River. Photo: Heal the Bay

On Wednesday, April 19, 2006, The State and L.A. Water Boards gained a major victory in California Supreme Court when the justices refused to hear claims by a coalition of 21 cities that challenged the Water Boards' landmark trash reduction program for the Los Angeles River.

The program upheld by the court is the "TMDL (total maximum daily load) program", a vital part of the Clean Water Act, designed to ensure that the nations' most polluted waters are cleaned up (see “About TMDLs” sidebar at right).

L.A. River Trash TMDL - Background
Trash is an enormous problem in our coastal and inland waters. Each year thousands of tons of trash washes through storm drains, down the L.A. River, into the estuary, and the Pacific Ocean where it blankets the water and beaches. In fact, the City of Long Beach spends millions of dollars each year to clean up tons of garbage that starts as litter in the gutters of upstream cities.

The litter is not only unsightly, but a health hazard to both marine life and people -- trash kills and maims fish and wildlife and degrades their habitat and, moreover, introduces bacteria along with other harmful elements that threaten the health of surfers, swimmers and other individuals who come into contact with the polluted water.

To address this and other water pollution problems, a legal settlement was reached between the EPA, Heal the Bay and others resulting in a federal court order requiring EPA to develop TMDL programs for the Los Angeles region’s most polluted waters. The Los Angeles Regional Water Board, a more local agency, has been developing TMDLs for the region in order to comply with this order and settlement.

One of the TMDL’s, adopted in 2001 by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, is a 14-year program to control and eliminate trash discharges to the L.A. River to zero. The program will require efforts by cities, the County of Los Angeles, and others to reduce trash through enhanced street sweeping, litter law enforcement, nets at the end of storm drains, and trash capture devices. It is potentially the single most important rule regarding trash in the history of the Clean Water Act.

Cities Attempt to Stop the TMDL
However, rather than supporting these efforts to clean up our region’s waters, 21 cities in the Los Angeles area sued the Water Boards to stop the regulation. A Court of Appeal threw out 9 of 10 challenges to the Los Angeles Water Quality Control Board's landmark trash reduction plan – the court found that the Water Boards considered all the costs, scientific, and technical issues associated with the trash reduction program as required. The only challenge that was upheld by Court of Appeal decision requires the Los Angeles Regional Water Board to revise the environmental checklist accompanying the trash reduction program, a technical fix that the Board can readily address.

The cities then appealed the 9 claims that they lost on to the California Supreme Court - again challenging the entire manner in which the Water Boards operate the TMDL program. In yet another victory for the Los Angeles Regional Water Board, the California Supreme Court declined to hear the cities' claims that a more-detailed cost-benefit analysis was required before the Water Boards could order the cities to reduce trash going to the river from their sewers, that the zero trash goal is not achievable, and that a scientific "assimilative capacity study" is a prerequisite to determining that garbage harms the aesthetic values of the water body.

The bottom line: The Supreme Court declined to review the case, leaving intact the entire Court of Appeal decision, hence upholding the L.A. River Trash TMDL.

Impacts of the Decision
The CA Supreme Court’s decision upholds the State’s core authority to require not just these important and necessary trash reductions, but other TMDL programs as well to address the myriad pollutants impairing our region's waters. The result will be effective and enforceable regulations for cleaner streams, rivers, watersheds and beaches throughout the state.

In addition, the cities' litigation in this and other matters has taken significant resources from both the cities and the state. In fact, there are currently two other lawsuits pending by these same cities which present comprehensive challenges to the Water Board’s basin planning and TMDL programs. Water Board members hope that the Supreme Court’s decision will encourage these cities to cooperate to protect human health and the environment by resolving their litigation and begin addressing the hundreds of water quality impairments in the Los Angeles Region. The Los Angeles River is only one of over 679 water bodies that California identified as impaired on the most recent 2002 report.