Channelkeeper ensures that entities, both public and private, comply with environmental laws, and that government agencies enforce those laws. When environmental laws are violated and the government fails to respond, Channelkeeper occasionally uses citizen lawsuits to protect the public interest in clean water and healthy aquatic habitats.
Click the links below to learn more about our current enforcement actions:
- preventing over-pumping of water from the Ventura River and its aquifers to ensure sufficient in-stream flows to sustain steelhead and other wildlife
- reducing pollution from irrigated agriculture
- ensuring that potential impacts of fracking from offshore platforms on endangered species and the environment are fully assessed prior to permitting
Some of our past enforcement accomplishments include:
- compelling Santa Barbara County to eliminate polluted industrial stormwater runoff from the South Coast Recycling and Transfer Station, formerly the #1 violator of California’s industrial stormwater permit on the entire Central Coast
- compelling the City of SB to invest $20 million to improve its sewer system maintenance, reduce sewage overflows, and nearly double the number of sewer pipes it repairs and replaces
- cleaning up sediment pollution and degradation of steelhead habitat from the Ojai Quarry
- stopping the discharge of water polluted with horse waste from the Santa Barbara Polo Club to Padaro Beach
- compelling the US Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen its permit for discharges from offshore oil platforms
- successfully challenging the federal government’s extension of 36 undeveloped oil leases off the southern California coast, ultimately resulting in the extinguishment of 30 undeveloped leases
- forcing Halaco Engineering Company to clean up its metal smelting factory on Ormond Beach, ultimately resulting in the closure of the facility and its addition to the National Superfund List.