Safe Clean Water Program – What’s Worked and What Hasn’t (Part II)
May 4, 2023
This blog is the second in a three-part series. You can read the first part here.
If you saw some of the reporting on the release of our assessment, you may have gleaned the program is falling significantly short of goals. The reality is much more complicated than that, which is understandable for a program as complex as the SCWP. There is much we can and should celebrate about the Safe Clean Water Program, even while noting areas where it can be improved.
Starting with the report’s very first finding, LA Waterkeeper noted that “a complex program gets off the ground and achieves notable success.” With voters having approved Measure W just over four years ago, the SCWP has managed to not only get off the ground, but fully complete three rounds of funding, with the 4th round of projects already scored and recommended (to be affirmed by the Regional
Oversight Committee and Board of Supervisors by fall 2023). Those three rounds of completed Regional Program funding earmarked more than $700 million — over $1 billion including matching funds — for:
101 multi-benefit infrastructure projects,
35 mini grants to provide technical assistance to develop projects,
14 scientific studies, and
Hiring of 12 watershed coordinators to engage communities and support local project development.
Collectively, the funded construction projects when completed will, according to applicants, result in:
Up to 50k acre-feet per year (AFY) of stormwater being captured and reused (enough for ~553k residents);
394M gallons of stormwater being captured during a typical storm (5-10 billion gallons), helping alleviate flood risk and reduce water pollution;
Planting 4,280 new trees and 1.7 million square feet of vegetation, providing habitat, shade, recreational opportunities, and other benefits to local communities.
Moreover, the report identifies 20 exemplar projects in a variety of sizes, types and locations, such as the Urban Orchard project along the LA River in South Gate. These exemplars can set the standard for the types of projects we want to see moving forward.
Before moving on to areas where improvements must be made to the SCWP to ensure it fulfills its promise, let us reflect on what an accomplishment this truly is. While we are accustomed to governments moving at what can feel like a glacial pace, in less than five years the County Flood Control District will have built the SCWP from the ground up. That’s no small task. The effort included hiring an internal management team and filling 168 committee positions and earmarking more than $1B through 4 rounds of funding. And recall much of this was done at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made everything more challenging.
Moreover, unlike other ballot measures that have a clear and singular purpose (like Measure A to support park development or Measure M for transportation-related projects), Measure W provides funding for multi-benefit projects that seek to capture and treat stormwater to serve three distinct purposes: to reduce runoff pollution, enhance local water supply, and green local communities. As such, Measure W is more like three measures in one.
Just as significantly, the measure that created the SCWP lacked the same roadmap for project development that other recent measures have had. For example, 2016’s Measure A relied on the comprehensive Los Angeles Countywide Parks and Recreation Needs Assessment to strategically guide project development. The SCWP, instead, has been building the plane while flying it.
A Complex Governance Structure
The SCWP has a complex governance structure that includes separate committees for scoring, nine watershed committees to make funding decisions, and an audit committee (the Regional Oversight Committee, or ROC) to ensure program consistency and that it’s meeting its goals. The SCWP also includes strong community engagement components, which required first defining the role of and then hiring Watershed Coordinators. The SCWP is also not a single program. Half the funds raised go to the competitive Regional grant program (the focus of our assessment) and the other half is distributed to local jurisdictions for stormwater projects as well as programs that provide technical assistance, scientific studies, education & outreach, and workforce development.
The structural complexity of the SCWP is a feature, not a bug. The program is complex by design to ensure decision-making happens largely at the local level, to ensure community input and buy-in, and also to ensure proper checks-and-balances within the program.
Acknowledging Shortcomings
Despite the notable successes of this program to date, it’s clear that adjustments to how the program operates are needed if it is to reach its full potential. Most notably, the SCWP has made negligible progress replacing hardscape with new greenspace that can hold, treat and recharge groundwater. Most of the projects funded to date focused primarily on building stormwater capture under existing parks or roads. With $1 billion already allocated, the SCWP can only point to 30 acres of new greenspace (in a county of nearly three million acres!) countywide through projects funded to date. The SCWP will need to radically accelerate hardscape removal to effectively meet the program’s objectives. Greening at schools in particular has been lackluster, with only two school greening projects moving forward countywide, neither of which are part of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).
Additionally, a lack of specific metrics and clear definitions for evaluating community investment benefits, nature-based solutions, community engagement and support, and benefits to disadvantaged communities has led to uncertainty and inconsistent achievement of SCWP outcomes. The current approach to scoring projects doesn’t differentiate between how well a project meets evaluation criteria, so those with a small impact (e.g., plants 3 new trees) receives the same credit as projects with relatively large impact (e.g., plants 100 trees) due to the lack of clear quantitative metrics in the current scoring criteria. There is also some uncertainty whether water supply benefits (and to a much lesser extent water quality improvements) will be fully achieved for a variety of reasons, including lack of understanding how different projects may interact with one another.
Community education, engagement and workforce development programs, and strong labor standards that were promised to voters as part of Measure W have yet to roll out. These programs are anticipated to be formally launched in 2023, but the delay threatens to undermine some of the program’s key benefits.
One interesting finding that came out of the assessment was that we are seeing fewer funding requests and smaller projects (by several metrics) over time. This trend suggests that the first rounds of projects were focused on clearing a long backlog of important stormwater projects that had stalled due to lack of funding. But this trend also presents an opportunity – with most of that backlog cleared, we now have a chance to take a deep breath, and more effectively shape projects moving forward. Read on to see What’s Next for the SCWP for a glimpse at how we can ensure this essential program meets its promise.
