The La Center City Council heard from the city’s Public Works Director Bryan Kast on an illicit discharge ordinance at its May 24 meeting, which would add new regulations intended to protect the health and safety of residents.
Water from the municipal storm sewer system discharges into surface water, often with little to no treatment. That runoff can harm wildlife and habitat, as well as stormwater facilities that naturally mitigate water from storms, Kast said. Older developments don’t have those facilities, which can lead to runoff making its way to the Lewis River.
La Center currently has little to no means of regulating discharge into the storm sewer system, Kast said.
“Really, right now we just have a garbage-dumping ordinance,” Kast said.
The regulations would establish a means by which the city can inspect and enforce non-stormwater discharge and would add a list of what is allowed.
Kast said the regulations he brought forth largely follow the Washington State Department of Ecology guidelines. Kast said he has experience with the implementation of similar regulations for other jurisdictions.
He noted in those prior instances, a jurisdiction approached or was at population level, which is when Ecology requires certain restrictions. La Center has yet to reach that level.
Prohibited discharge includes trash or debris, petroleum products, automotive products including antifreeze, paints, solvents, pesticides, detergents, disinfectants, animal waste, lawn debris and sewage, among others, according to Kast’s presentation.
He said there have been instances in the past that would be subject to the ordinance, like residents washing out paint into storm drains.
“That goes straight to the creeks and the streams and the wetlands,” Kast said.
Lawn debris can also build up in catch basins and can obstruct water flows.
Outright allowed uses in the proposed regulations include surface and groundwater, condensation and emergency firefighting flows. The proposal had dechlorinated potable water and pool water with low-enough levels of chlorine, water used to wash streets and sidewalks, as well as car wash water as conditional uses.
The proposed code allows for written warnings and the cost recovery on any remediation from discharge, Kast said. It also includes the potential to suspend a connection to the system, though he noted execution of that can prove to be a challenge.
“What do you do, go put like a plug in someone’s (storm drain?)” Kast said. “That’s built into the code, but practically speaking, is kind of hard to do.”
The proposal also allows the city to inspect property, which is another controversial aspect of the code, Kast said.
“We don’t want to be overstepping our bounds of privacy and people’s ability to have their private property be private,” Kast said.
He said the proposal allows for immediate inspection in an emergency or with 24 hours of notice in other situations. He said the provision is mostly intended for commercial and industrial properties. Most of those users will already have state-level permits with similar requirements.
The proposal allows for an appeals process through an independent hearings examiner if someone feels the code is unfairly applied to them, Kast said.
The council declined to require car washes to take place over “pervious” services like grass, as is required by Ecology for jurisdictions of more than 10,000 population.
“The runoff from car washing seems to be minimal, where I drive by, anyway,” councilor K.C. Kasberg said.
Nixing that requirement was the only major change the council wanted staff to take into account when they craft the final ordinance. That will come back to the council for a vote at a future meeting before the ordinance goes into effect.
