City's Creeks

[ SBN-P Editorial by Travis Armstrong, 3/20/2005 ]:

A bottom line on city's creek dollars

3/20/05

Also, county goes against steelhead

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Santa Barbarans went to the ballot box in November 2000 to tack on a couple of percentage points to the city's hotel taxes to pay for improving our creeks and beach water.

Measure B's $2 million a year in tax revenue is meant to be extra money, not a piggy bank to raid to fund whatever the city already was doing or may be required to do by federal or state law in the future.

How much would the city be spending today on water-quality programs if Measure B never passed? How much did the city spend before Measure B's passage, and was that money redirected in later annual budgets to programs not involving water quality?

To no avail, I've spent several years trying to figure out answers to these questions.

They again are on my mind because of a 17-page letter recently sent to the city by the state regional water-quality regulators. It outlines numerous steps the city must take to adhere to the federal Clean Water Act.

To comply with the law, the city in 2003 submitted to regulators a draft of a document known as a storm water management plan. Now the regulators have answered back with the letter.

Among their many concerns: The city must come up with a series of "measurable goals" to reduce pollution rather than the generalities seen in the draft. For example, on educating the residents the city needs to get specific on the "certain percentage of the target group that would receive brochures/posters, or attend training on a yearly basis."

And just citing the existence of an ordinance on illegal discharges isn't good enough. The letter notes: "The act of adopting an ordinance does not necessarily protect water quality, the act of enforcing an ordinance does."

Watchdogs point out that the city's enforcement program lacks teeth.

Here's the bottom line: Hotel-tax dollars shouldn't pay for any steps the regional regulators say the city must take to meet the law. Measure B is to go above and beyond these bare minimums, or voters should just repeal the tax.

The City Council also ought to consider reimbursing the Measure B fund for start-up costs if any programs being paid for today by these taxes -- such as public outreach -- become mandated by the regulators under the clean-water law. Hotel owners and voters should demand it.

STEELHEAD: As the Santa Barbara City Council made headlines by voting to send a letter to help the steelhead spawn in the Santa Ynez River, the county government took a different stand outside the public spotlight.

Thanks to the work of environmental advocates and City Council members Das Williams and Helene Schneider, the council signed off on the designation of federal critical habitat for the "silvery warriors" in the upper Santa Ynez River.

The original letter proposed by city staffers recommended against the designation because of overblown concerns that it could impact water supplies.

At the county, though, residents never had the opportunity to go to the Board of Supervisors to make the case for the steelhead. The county staff, in a letter signed by Public Works Director Phillip Demery and Parks Director Terri Maus-Nisich, wrongly made the call without public input.


Travis Armstrong is the editorial page editor of the News-Press.

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A bottom line on city's creek dollars