In 1969, when the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio, the flames enflamed environmental activists. The images fueled demands for stricter air and water pollution standards throughout the country. The Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972.

Storm water runoff has little imagery associated with it. It happens when storm water captures the pollution on streets, lawns, parking lots and construction sites and then runs off into waterways, such as rivers.

Storm water runoff doesn’t have a very interesting name, either. Its nicknames are more descriptive: “city juice” and “toxic cocktail.”

Yet storm water runoff is the latest battle front for those seeking to reduce pollution in waterways in both Idaho and Washington. In Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire is asking for $26 million in her proposed budget to help educate homeowners and implement ways to prevent and treat the pollution carried in storm water runoff.

Her budget proposal would help cities, including Spokane, Spokane Valley and Liberty Lake, meet water quality standards when seeking permits for their storm water systems. Meanwhile, tougher permitting standards are expected for municipalities in North Idaho, too.

The glimmer of good news in the storm water runoff story is this: Anti-pollution laws and regulations of the past 30 years have worked so well that old threats to waterways – such as toxic industrial waste and raw or poorly treated sewage – are now tightly monitored and controlled.

These are known as “point sources” of pollution because you can easily identify their points of origin. Now regulators and environmentalists have turned their attention to nonpoint sources of water pollution. It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact sources of this kind of pollution because many people can contribute to the problem, by overfertilizing their lawns or failing to pick up their pet’s daily droppings.

Storm water also contains PCBs and flame retardants, and when these contaminants reach the Spokane River, for instance, they compromise the river’s quality. Because the river exchanges water with the aquifer, the “city juice” threatens the region’s fresh drinking water, too.

The permitting standards, as well as Gregoire’s $26 million budget item, will be discussed and debated in coming months by those weary of even more regulations and by budget critics wondering if that $26 million could be better spent elsewhere, if at all.

In the meantime, citizens can understand that whatever is decided, storm water runoff will be expensive to prevent and minimize. Citizens will ultimately help pay part of the bill. Mitigation of storm water runoff begins at home. That’s the point.