Pacific Beach Town Council President Rick Oldham isn’t happy that the city sweeps Via Capri — the residential street that winds past expensive La Jolla homes on Mount Soledad, where many residents hire their own gardeners —four times a month when trash-strewn Cass Street only gets swept once a month. Oldham wants to know why the city chose to sweep streets farther from the ocean, like Via Capri or the Kensington area, more frequently than Cass Street, which runs alongside the ocean. The city started a two-year street-sweeping pilot program in 2007 when the levels of copper and zinc in Chollas and Tecolote creeks rose above satisfactory levels. The State Water Quality Control Board told the city it had 10 years to improve the water quality, according to Jennifer Nichols-Kearns, spokeswoman for the Storm Water Department. The city found that one of the most troubling pollutants that ended up in the water comes from braking cars that release brake dust onto the streets. The dust, containing copper and zinc particles, dissolves into runoff and ends up in the creeks, bays and oceans. The city targeted neighborhoods whose runoff eventually leads into San Diego Bay via Chollas Creek, Mission Bay via Tecolote Creek and La Jolla Shores. Via Capri is a heavily trafficked, steep road that leads down Mount Soledad to major thoroughfares that flow into La Jolla, dubbed “The Throat.”  Around Mission Bay, the city decided to sweep streets in Clairemont due to the heavy traffic emitting plenty of brake dust, according to Nichols-Kearns. Runoff from those neighborhoods leads into Tecolote Creek, which drains into Mission Bay. Balboa and Genesee avenues get swept once a week, whereas surrounding neighborhoods get swept twice a month. Mission Bay is most affected by bacteria from bird feces, but the city cannot eradicate the birds, Nichols-Kearns said. “We chose those three neighborhoods because there’s a lot of fine metal particles generated from brake dust pads,” Nichols-Kearns said. “The neighborhoods have heavy traffic and/or are very close to freeways or heavily trafficked roads or near a lot of auto part stores and mechanic shops.” Grand and Garnet — Pacific Beach’s main traffic arteries — do get swept once a week but are not part of the city’s pilot project to clean up metal particles. Nichols-Kearns said the city chose to target the La Jolla Shores area to comply with the California Ocean Plan to protect the designated ocean waters off La Jolla Shores, known as the Area of Special Biological Significance (ASBS), that the state designated to protect as a diverse habitat for a wide variety of species. The city’s general fund pays for the extra sweeping but the city has applied for a grant under Prop 50 to pay to sweep the La Jolla streets. Voters passed Prop 50 in 2002 authorizing the state to sell $3.44 billion in bonds for projects that protect the coast, ensure water quality, water supply reliability, safe drinking water and for coastal land acquisition. The Storm Water Department has even contributed $75,000 to a San Francisco nonprofit, the Brake Pad Partnership, which is pushing for automakers to manufacture brake pads without metals within 30 years. State Sen. Christine Kehoe, who represents most of San Diego, is pushing a bill that would force automakers to remove copper from brake pads within 13 years and substitute a nontoxic material. Kehoe said she decided to hold the bill this year because the opposition from car dealerships was too strong. “We need to gather more support that comes from people that understand that all the material from brake pads winds up in our beaches, bays, rivers and streams,” Kehoe said. The pilot program also compares three types of street sweepers: the mechanical brushes currently used by the city, vacuum sweepers that can suck up small particles and “regenerative” sweepers that emit a puff of air to lift and suck in debris. The regenerative and vacuum sweepers are more expensive and seem to break down more often, but preliminary results show they are more effective so far, according to Nichols-Kearns. At the conclusion of the pilot program, the Storm Water Department will analyze the data and make recommendations to the city about potentially incorporating new street sweepers. Although Oldham commended the city for its efforts to clean the bay and ocean of heavy metals, he said that doesn’t help the problem his neighborhood faces: copious amounts of trash. He said that tourists flock to San Diego for the beaches — not to visit neighborhoods like Clairemont — and that the tourists wear down the streets and leave their litter in PB. “The city of San Diego has turned its back on the beach communities,” Oldham said.  Oldham said the PBTC’s Safe and Beautiful Committee has asked I Love A Clean San Diego to take its trash message to the colleges, since students often party in Pacific Beach. The sidestreets between Garnet and Grand avenues often get hit the hardest. People spill out of the bars, grab something to eat and head to their cars parked on the sidestreets, then dump their pizza boxes and taco wrappers on the streets, Oldham said. “I grew up in the mountains of Colorado, where if you carried it in, you carried it out,” Oldham said. “I’d carry around a gum wrapper in my pocket until I found a trash can even though it drove me crazy.” The Safe and Beautiful Committee is even considering organizing a march to bring out hundreds of residents on a Thursday night to demonstrate that they care about their community. Oldham said the majority of longtime residents only visit Garnet Avenue to frequent Henry’s Market or Trader Joe’s.  “The march of residents would go into businesses to say, ‘We’re from PB. We want PB to be clean. We want our neighborhood back,’” Oldham said. But Nichols-Kearns said the community must show its support for extra street sweeping. She said unsupportive residents call her 25 times a day to complain about moving their cars. “Business and community leaders almost always support us,” Nichols-Kearns said. “It’s the everyday folk that could care less about the street sweeping when they have to get up at 6:45 a.m. to move their car because the sweeper comes at 7 a.m.” For more information, visit www.sandiego.gov/thinkblue/programs, click on “Special Projects,” then “Street Sweeping Pilot Study for FAQ’s.”