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Tell the Water Board to Protect Our Special Coastal Areas

In a surprise move, the California State Water Resources Control Board just dusted off an old, draft policy from the era of Governor Schwarzenegger and is poised to approve a complicated dirty water waiver to protections that safeguard the most fragile parts of California's coastal marine ecosystem – places known as Areas of Special Biological Significance (ASBS). Urban stormwater runoff is the largest source of pollution to California’s coastal waters. Yet the State Board is proposing to weaken a 40-year old prohibition on stormwater waste into ASBS by adopting an approach that could reward over 1700 illegal discharges into some of the most special coastal areas in California. Find ASBS in your area: http://www.cacoastkeeper.org/programs/healthy-marine-habitats/ASBS. Please take action by Monday, October 17 and tell the Water Board that California’s coast deserves all of the benefits of existing law and that a roll back of these protections is bad for California and the marine life that thrives in its coastal waters.

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May 25, 2012

Charlie Hoppin, Chair and Members
State Water Resources Control Board
1001 I Street
Sacramento, CA 95812-0100
c/o Jeanine Townsend, Clerk to the Board

Dear Chair Hoppin, and Board Members Doduc and Spivy-Weber: California’s coast, especially its Areas of Special Biological Significance, deserves all of the benefits of existing law. A roll back of these protections is bad for California and the marine life that thrives in its coastal waters. In short, this latest draft of the policy: • rewards dischargers for ignoring their pollution discharges to the ASBS; • fails to clearly define a scientific standard for compliance, instead punting to a future, vaguely-defined discharger-driven process; • threatens the beneficial uses of ASBS; • violates state and federal anti-degradation policies; • creates loopholes that could push compliance back indefinitely; and • violates the California Environmental Quality Act. Please vote NO on Item 6: the proposed Resolution approving an exception to the California Ocean Plan for Selected Discharges into Areas of Special Biological Significance, including Special Protections.

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