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Open Charter Magnet Elementary School Westchester, California from the Fall 2006 Building Better Report Santa Monica Bay's Water Quality Troubles Los Angeles and Santa Monica Bay have faced their share of water quality problems. The loss of 98 percent of L.A.'s wetlands has jeopardized the health of its waterways. The health of the Bay has improved from horribly poor water quality several decades ago, but challenges still remain. Following the heavy rains of 2004-2005, Heal the Bay wrote, "Wet weather water quality trends look fairly dismal…exceedingly heavy rainfall magnifies a continuing problem in Los Angeles, the lack of significant progress on wet weather water quality and lack of appropriate funding to clean up wet weather water quality. In the near future, wet weather water quality, it appears, will only improve with less rain." (1) Parents, Teachers and Children Working Together In a watershed that can empty more than 80 billion gallons of runoff into the Santa Monica Bay in a year, one school is leading the way toward a more innovative future. (2) The Open Charter Magnet Elementary School in Westchester, California made a number of improvements to its grounds to capture and re-use stormwater under the leadership of Andy Lipkis, an Open Charter parent and founder of Tree People, an environmental non-profit best known for its work planting over two million trees in the Los Angeles area. Starting in 1999, Tree People worked with the school's staff, students, and parents to create a more environmentally friendly site, by planting trees and other vegetation on school grounds and breaking up impervious parking lot surfaces to help prevent polluted stormwater runoff. However, the largest, most significant stormwater improvement to the school grounds was a 110,000 gallon cistern buried beneath the campus's playing fields. This underground tank collects, holds, and cleans runoff from the property, enabling the school to use the recycled water for watering the vegetation on the site instead of letting wasted water gather pollution and flow into the Bay. Stormwater: A Resource, Not a Waste Product The system created for the Open Charter cistern project varies from the traditional engineering approach, which is to treat stormwater as a waste product to be disposed of as quickly as possible. One of the engineers for the project, Michael Drennan, P.E. explains, "As we look at how the system evolved over time we realize that the way we designed the (stormwater) system was reactionary and single purpose in its approach … if you think about multiple objectives like flooding, pollution reduction, and water supply, then you might design a system like we did at Open Charter, which manages stormwater as a resource rather than a waste." (3) L.A.: A Look Ahead The Open Charter project is helping lead the way for more positive stormwater solutions in Los Angeles. Los Angeles voters recently passed a $500 million bond to underwrite projects to meet the goals of the new Integrated Resources Plan (IRP) which seeks to capture, clean and reuse water, while also creating open space and wildlife habitat where possible. The State's Regional Water Quality Control Board has come to recognize the value of natural treatment systems for polluted stormwater, including swales, treatment wetlands and vegetated buffers. Sierra Club activists have proposed a treatment wetland just down the hill from Open Charter Elementary on more than 100 acres in the Ballona Valley floodplain where the Los Angeles River historically converged with Centinela Creek. These treatment wetlands will not only capture stormwater, but also cleanse pollutants before the waters empty into the Santa Monica Bay. Bringing back more of the natural landscape throughout the watershed, rather than pouring more concrete, can best help L.A. improve its water quality. Footnotes: Heal the Bay's 15th Annual Beach Report Card. The Daily Breeze, March 4, 2005, on Tree People Web site, it says in a season of 30 inches of rainfall, 82 billion gallons of runoff emptied into the Bay. The average rainfall in a year is 15 inches. "Collection and Reuse of Stormwater," Government Engineering Magazine, March - April 2005. Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use | © 2008 Sierra Club