Safe Clean Water Program – … and What’s Next! (Part III)

May 4, 2023

This blog is the third in a three-part series. You can read the first part here and the second part here.

In rolling out the SCWP, the County Flood Control District faced a daunting task – one that required a delicate balancing act between competing goals. Given the widespread understanding that significant, immediate investment is needed to address all three prongs of the SCWP goals (water quality, water security, and community benefits), it’s understandable that shovel-ready projects were quickly given a green light. But funding already-planned projects without a comprehensive forward-looking plan runs the risk of not spending taxpayer funds in the most strategic and impactful way possible. The projects funded to date, therefore, may not necessarily be the best possible projects that could have been funded for the money spent. 

Personally, I think the County threaded the needle about as well as could be expected considering the competing factors at hand. We can be proud of the projects being funded through these early rounds and be assured they will help meet a lot of environmental and community needs. Having nearly two-dozen exemplars moving forward that can light the path for more community-supported, multi-benefit, nature-based projects in the future can only help to ensure the program’s long-term success.  

But my positive feelings about what we’ve accomplished to date must not be confused with believing that a hard look at how the program may be falling short is not necessary. In fact, our assessment demonstrates that substantial improvements are needed and possible. And, as highlighted previously, the SCWP has a built-in process for ongoing assessment and adaptive management…a process, known as the biennial review, that is to be completed this year for the first time.  

Our report included a summary of recommendations for the Regional Oversight Committee (ROC) to consider in this biennial review, and how the SCWP can and should be improved. That summary is included as part of this blog; a more complete set of recommendations can be found starting on page 37 of our assessment.  

Rather than restarting them all I would like to highlight a few major points here. 

First, the ROC must initiate the biennial review immediately. As highlighted throughout this blog series, the SCWP is a massive and complex program that aims to achieve a myriad of diverse goals for the LA region. As someone involved in our assessment, as well as some of those undertaken by other groups, I can attest to the massive undertaking it is to evaluate the various aspects of the SCWP in depth.  

Starting the biennial review too late gives short shrift to this integral process and could prevent needed improvements to the SCWP from moving forward as expeditiously. 

The good news is that several SCWP assessments have already been completed, including not only our Changing Course? Report, but also those led by the ARLA Working Group, SCOPE, and Stantec with UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (as part of the County’s Metrics and Monitoring Study). The ROC should initiate the biennial review with briefings on these assessments by June (at the latest!), which will provide a great foundation as they move forward with their assessment and recommendations throughout 2023.  

Another major recommendation is to start moving from the SCWP’s current reactive approach (where the various committees respond to project applications as they are submitted) to a more visionary approach where we proactively identify the best projects (or at least types of projects) for different areas to maximize environmental and community benefits. Such a forward-looking approach should be based on existing data and a robust community needs assessment.  

Some parts of LA County have pervious soils and abundant space, which make them ideal for larger projects that focus on groundwater recharge. Other areas have particularly problematic water quality issues, where focusing on compliance with regulation might be the highest priority. Still, other communities throughout LA are space constrained and disproportionately burdened by many impacts from flooding to extreme heat, making smaller, more distributed nature-based projects more appropriate in those areas. A reactive one-size-fits-all approach is likely to prevent the SCWP from fully reaching the outcomes promised to voters.   

Luckily, a tremendous amount of data already exists that can highlight needs, including CalEnviroScreen (which ranks environmental burdens of various communities), the County’s Park Needs Assessment (which identified park-poor neighborhoods), and a variety of data sets that identify which of the region’s rivers, creeks and coastal waters are most polluted; which areas suffer most from flooding and heat; and where soils are best for groundwater recharge, to name a few.  

But just because we have great data doesn’t mean that community input isn’t also critically important to help inform what types of projects we want where. Such engagement efforts are already underway to better understand community needs throughout LA County, including the ongoing Water Talks effort.   

Work has even been done to suggest how such data and community input can be combined to help inform a more proactive approach to the Safe Clean Water Program, particularly through the ARLA Working Group report.  

By identifying the best types of projects for various areas, such a data- and community-driven approach would also help address some of the program’s other major shortcomings, such as lack of hardscape removal (particularly at schools); more clarity around achieving a myriad of community benefits (especially in our most burdened communities); and more certainty that all promised benefits will actually be achieved.    

After the release of our assessment, and some of the headlines that focused on the program’s shortcomings, I fielded numerous calls and emails from allies asking if I was somehow disillusioned with the Safe Clean Water Program. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was proud to be an integral part of the OurWaterLA Coalition and the development and then passage of Measure W. And, I have been proud to be part of the implementation of the SCWP by chairing the Scoring Committee and serving on the Central Santa Monica Bay Watershed Area Steering Committee since the program’s inception. I am proud of the amazing progress that has been made to date, and applaud the Board of Supervisors, staff at the Flood Control District, and all the committee volunteers, advocates and others involved in the SCWP for all that has been accomplished to date.  

But it is precisely because of my involvement in the SCWP since its inception – and even a sense of some ownership of the program – that I want to ensure it is the best program that delivers the most benefits to our environment and communities as possible. Hopefully our assessment plays an important role as the ROC – and later the Board of Supervisors – completes its biennial review and tackles how the SCWP can reach its lofty and important goals.