Antos quoted on how Los Angeles County uses storm runoff
While rainfall can be a welcome sight in the dry Southland, when water hits the region’s concrete and blacktop landscape, it turns into a giant headache for beachgoers and environmentalists: untreated storm water or urban runoff.
Water managers and environmental groups view rain rushing down gutters differently — not as pollution but as a lost resource. Every gallon of rain water that funnels down hundreds of miles of concrete channels to the Pacific Ocean represents a gallon of drinking water that has to be purchased from Northern California or the Colorado River at much higher costs. Already, Los Angeles County gets 60 percent of its water from such imported sources, even as supplies dwindle and prices skyrocket.
Local water agencies say storm water is the nearest and most plentiful source.
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Rainfall in L.A. doesn’t help the LADWP much. About half of the rainfall flowing down the Los Angeles River in a typical storm is lost to the ocean, according to the Water Augmentation Study from the Council for Watershed Health, a L.A.-based environmental organization. Most of the rainwater that bounces off roofs, parking lots, streets and sidewalks ends up in storm channels that flush rain water into the ocean. That amounts to 10 billion gallons from an average rain storm, enough to fill 120 Rose Bowls, said Alix Hobbs, president of Heal The Bay.
One solution is to capture it as soon as it hits the ground, said Mike Antos, research manager with the Council for Watershed Health, an L.A.-based nonprofit that studies the San Gabriel and Los Angeles rivers and mountain watersheds.
Antos’ group found that before urbanization, 95 percent of rainfall in Southern California went back into the ground. Today, with concrete and asphalt covering the region, 60 percent of rainfall is lost to the ocean, Antos said.
“We’ll never get all back to only 5 percent of the rain getting out to the ocean,” he said. “But we know there are projects that can solve water quality and take a bite out of water quantity problems, and also take bites out of climate change.”
