CPA Supports SB City’s Clean Water Policies

July 17, 2020

To: Santa Barbara City Planning Commissioners

Re: Storm water Permit Updates

CPA has been a voice for the protection of the environment for more than 60 years. The current storm water policies protect the City’s creeks and the ocean from water pollution. We strongly recommend these policies not be weakened.

The City has made clean water a priority since 2000 when over 70% of the City’s voters passed Measure B-2000 to establish the City’s Creek Restoration and Water Quality Improvement Program. Before 2000, the City’s beaches were often under advisory or closed due to polluted storm water runoff. Tourism suffered as word got out about “Santa Barbara’s dirty beaches.”

The community has made great progress in the last twenty years, and our creeks and beaches are cleaner as a result. We must not go back to the days when polluted runoff fouled Santa Barbara’s creeks, and our beautiful beaches were closed to swimming due to water pollution.

The CPA board feels many of the proposed changes go far beyond the original purpose of project, which was to make the storm water post construction program “more flexible, equitable and effective, as well as easier to understand”.

Proposed changes, by your own statement of purpose, should ensure the City meets the Clean Water Act mandates. We recommend the Commission should do more to bolster the policy to protect clean water, not weaken the ordinance.

Respectfully submitted,

Marell Brooks, President

Citizens Planning Association

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916 Anacapa Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101 (805) 966-3979 www.CitizensPlanning.org

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