On June 1, California Coastkeeper Alliance and local Waterkeepers filed petitions in six different waterways in San Diego, the Inland Empire, the San Francisco Bay, the Central Coast, the North Coast, and the Sacramento-Delta. The petitions aim to push water regulators to require stormwater permits for Commercial, Industrial, and Institutional (CII) facilities – think Amazon warehouses and Costco parking lots – for the first time.
The big picture: California’s chance to lead the nation
This coordinated filing is a stepping stone toward a larger goal: to encourage the state to create the nation’s first statewide commercial stormwater permit. It would apply to large facilities like big-box stores, warehouse campuses, shopping centers, and industrial parks that blanket California’s cities with impervious asphalt and rooftops. We believe that California residents and businesses alike would be better served by a uniform approach to regulating runoff from these large industrial campuses instead of a patchwork of permits with different requirements in different parts of the state.
Why it matters: Corporations get a free pass while cities pay the bill
In community after community, commercial properties generate 30 to 60 percent of toxic metal pollution that poisons our waterways, even though acre-for-acre they only cover a fraction of the land. Cities are legally liable for cleaning up this pollution. Large corporations like Amazon and Target currently get a free pass. Establishing a statewide stormwater permit would shift compliance costs to where they belong: on the polluters, rather than on cities and taxpayers.
Metal pollution from unregulated commercial sites is acutely toxic to aquatic life. It kills fish, contaminates shellfish, and fouls the rivers and creeks that spill out along California’s coastline. Hundreds of waters across the state remain unsafe to fish, swim or drink year after year, with metals and bacteria among the leading causes.
The end goal: Solutions at the source
The goal of a statewide policy is that commercial landowners invest in protecting public waterways through on-site solutions like retention ponds or bioswales to filter out contaminants before water percolates underground. Facilities that can’t treat on-site should contribute to local urban greening projects that would capture the stormwater as a resource rather than allow it to pollute our beaches.
Cleaning up California’s waterways is impossible if commercial properties don’t begin to take responsibility for their pollution and help with the cleanup.
Read our full press release here.
Executive Director Sean Bothwell leads CCKA’s initiatives to fight for swimmable, fishable, and drinkable waters for all Californians.
