San Diego faces a serious environmental and economic threat, and the solution lies in the brakes on your car or truck. Each time you apply your brakes, the friction on the brake pads creates dust, which settles on roads and washes into stormdrains, eventually finding its way into our urban creeks and San Diego Bay. That dust contains copper, which is harmful to aquatic species from plankton to salmon. Scientific studies show the largest source of copper in urban watersheds is vehicle brake pads. To comply with the federal Clean Water Act, our regional water board has ordered the amount of copper in Chollas Creek in San Diego to be drastically reduced by 2028 or face fines amounting to tens of thousands of dollars a day. Trying to remove copper once it has dissolved in water would be expensive and disruptive to the communities near the creek. The city of San Diego endured huge fines in the 1990s when it similarly failed to comply with state wastewater standards, and the city wants to avoid that fate this time. The only feasible way to comply and avoid immense costs is to cut off copper at its source — vehicle brake pads. I have introduced legislation that will allow San Diego and other California cities to meet their clean-water requirements and avoid cleanup costs and fines. Senate Bill 346 requires that brake pads sold in California contain no more than a trace amount (0.5 percent) of copper by 2025. This gives brake pad manufacturers 15 years to develop and distribute copper-free brake pads. The bill will ensure that any new brake pads will be as safe or safer than those currently on the market. Some argue California should adopt a law similar to one recently enacted in the state of Washington: capping copper at 5 percent by 2021 and creating an advisory committee to study reaching the 0.5 percent limit “in later years.” The problem is that California isn’t Washington — we face strict copper limits on our urban waterways and they don’t. We need a firm date for reaching 0.5 percent in order to avoid the fiscal catastrophe that copper-related cleanup costs and fines could create for San Diego and other local governments. My deadline of 2025 wasn’t just pulled out of a hat — it’s the latest date that stormwater agencies believe they can allow to comply by 2028 (given an average brake pad turnover rate of three years). I have created mechanisms to assist segments of the industry that can’t make or won’t be able to obtain a safe copper-free product in time, and I am absolutely committed to ensuring that copper-free brake pads are as safe or safer than current materials. San Diego and California don’t have the luxury that Washington has of being able to wait for a no-copper alternative to be available sometime in the future. I believe the ingenuity and creativity of the auto industry is up to the challenge. — Sen. Christine Kehoe represents the 39th California Senate District, including La Jolla, University City, Point Loma, Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, Mission Beach and downtown San Diego.