I’m watching and listening to a webinar with State Senator Robert Hertzberg on SB 231. The law, recently signed Governor Brown, creates an opening for municipalities to fund their stormwater programs with a fee similar to those charged for water or sanitary sewer service–if they can link the newly funded programs to a benefit for the water or sanitary sewer utility. The purpose and tone of the webinar is to caution municipalities against adopting fees that will bring lawsuits, already threatened, from the Howard-Jarvis Taxpayer’s Association.
I’m glad, of course, for the appearance of any potential path to funding needed municipal services, particularly stormwater pollution prevention, where I do most of my work.
However, the law and Hertzberg’s cautions about using it validate the concerns I had more than two years ago.
To expand on those concerns: Surface runoff isn’t just about water supply, it’s a key ingredient of the natural environment–and of urban quality of life. Everything we’re doing now with Green Infrastructure and Low Impact Development is not about getting water back into our homes and businesses, it’s about preserving and enhancing watersheds. So this emphasis on stormwater capture and use, well, it’s miles away from what Section 402(p) of the Clean Water Act is all about.
It’s also a very Southern California thing, to regard the natural environment as a stage and a resource for serving urban development, rather than nestling human habitation amidst nature, which is our northern Californian ethos.
With due respect and appreciation for Senator Hertzberg and Governor Brown, I think that–for the agencies I work for–this effort has been more negative than positive. I’d rather that we find a path to funding stormwater that is based on the higher principle, and better argument, that when it comes to the water cycle, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”