Why are California cities still paying for corporate pollution?

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OPINION — California’s cities spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars each year to manage their clean water obligations, yet violations persist with no clear end in sight.

Stormwater pollution is ubiquitous, and commercial, industrial, and institutional properties are a significant and unaddressed part of the problem, contributing between 35–60% of stormwater pollutants.

Despite their substantial contribution, these corporate properties have never been required to address the pollution they generate.

Meanwhile, cities and counties remain responsible for meeting water quality standards through municipal stormwater permits, despite having no control over a significant source of pollution entering municipal storm drains.

For example, in San Bernardino County, large commercial properties take up less than one-third of the land, but runoff from these properties – places like fulfillment centers, warehouses, and data centers – is responsible for nearly two-thirds of the copper and zinc pollution that flows into an already over-polluted waterway.

Municipalities cannot achieve legally required watershed-wide pollution compliance while major private-sector contributors remain outside the regulatory system.

The only way cities will ever fulfill their legal obligations to keep waterways clean will be if private commercial landowners are required to be part of the solution. And the best way to make that happen is through a statewide stormwater permit.

So why has the statewide municipal stormwater establishment resisted enactment of statewide regulations?

The explanation, offered quietly in Sacramento hallways and stakeholder meetings, is that they are holding out for constitutional reform.

But this type of reform is neither imminent nor a substitute for regulating major private pollution sources. Under Proposition 218, it is nearly impossible to raise stormwater fees.

Voters adopted Prop 218 in 1996. Thirty years of waiting for constitutional reform has produced nothing of substance. Asking California voters to approve an amendment that makes it easier to raise fees on property owners is not going to happen in the current environment of intense affordability anxiety.

Furthermore, it should not be the public on the hook for corporate pollution. A local stormwater ordinance taxes ratepayers, while a statewide commercial stormwater permit puts the burden on corporate polluters to pay for their mess.

Amazon, Costco, Walmart, and the owners of California’s logistics infrastructure should pay to clean up the water pollution they generate – not the public already bearing the brunt of a polluted community and unhealthy water.

A statewide commercial stormwater permit would generate immediate funding. Under two recent bills that stalled out in Sacramento, commercial stormwater permit holders would have had the option to meet their obligations by funding regional stormwater projects — green infrastructure, stormwater capture, wetland restoration — at the watershed scale.

That money could have paid for exactly the kind of infrastructure most municipalities say they cannot afford to build. And because compliance fees are regulatory costs rather than taxes or assessments, they are not subject to Prop 218’s restrictions.

It’s a mystery as to why cities have resisted this framework, which shifts liability away from them and generates compliance funding from large corporations. And yet California cities continue to argue they cannot afford to meet their Clean Water Act obligations.

The corporations generating this pollution have had a free ride for thirty years. It is past time for them to help solve the problems their properties are creating.

California Coastkeeper Alliance spent years pursuing a collaborative solution to this problem, including supporting bills that would have given municipalities the very framework they claim to need. Those bills were blocked, largely by lobbyists representing municipal associations.

With the legislative path obstructed, Coastkeeper is now exercising our legal right under the Clean Water Act. We recently petitioned Regional Water Boards across the state to require stormwater permits for commercial, industrial, and institutional facilities.

The choice is no longer between regulation and inaction. It is between continuing to place the financial and legal burden on cities and the public or finally requiring major polluters to take responsibility for the runoff their properties generate.

After three decades of delay, California must adopt statewide regulations that protect clean water, hold polluters accountable, and ensure that those creating the problem pay to solve it.

Sean Bothwell is executive director of California Coastkeeper Alliance.