Water Quality Soared in Summer

Heal the Bay Report Says Greater City Effort Needed

Water quality test scores at beaches throughout the state soared this summer, according to Heal the Bay’s annual Summer Beach Report Card. And that success’and some failure’hit close to home. ‘This was an incredible summer’the best we’ve had in recent memory,’ said Heal the Bay Executive Director Mark Gold at a press conference last Thursday morning on Will Rogers State Beach, next to the Chautauqua Boulevard storm drain. ‘One of the reasons we’re standing here is that this has been a chronically D and F beach. ‘Usually, we stand here and do these [conferences] and report the bad news,’ Gold told his audience. ‘But we have good news to report today.’ Each fall, the environmental nonprofit releases the results of its statewide summer beach report, which reflects testing of bacteria levels from multiple sources, including fecal waste, at beaches between the end of May and the beginning of September. Beaches are assigned grades ranging from A through F, corresponding to the risk of illness to ocean users. Of the 67 beach locations tested in Santa Monica Bay this summer, 93 percent received A or B grades, up from 75 percent the previous summer. Beaches like Castle Rock at Sunset Boulevard and nearly all of Will Rogers saw A and A+ grades. But of the five beaches in the Bay with ‘poor water quality,’ two were along the Palisades. Castle Rock Beach at Sunset Mesa received a C; Will Rogers at Temescal Canyon received an F. Other sites within the Bay which received failing grades were the Santa Monica Pier, Dockweiler State Beach at Ballona Creek and Malibu’s Puerco Beach. Improvements within Santa Monica Bay reflected a statewide trend. The percentage of California beaches receiving A or B grades rose 10 percent from last year to 92 percent. Consistent with recent patterns, L.A. County had the poorest water quality in the state. The report cites ‘extremely poor water quality’ in Long Beach and Avalon for helping the county secure its worst-in-the-state ranking. Heal the Bay attributes much of the improvement to a record statewide drought. The nonprofit also credits tougher pollution standards and better enforcement by local governments. Both the city and county have recently completed millions of dollars worth of improvements by building and upgrading storm drains. ‘We’ve seen a sea change in cooperation between the city and county,’ Gold said. But there are still local causes of concern. As reported by the Palisadian-Post, water quality suffered at Temescal as a result of irregular maintenance of the canyon’s city-operated low-flow (dry season) diversion. A large summer buildup of trash accumulated at the diversion, which prevented it from rerouting polluted urban runoff away from the beach, said city sanitation engineers. The city did not clean the diversion until after it received calls from Heal the Bay and the Post’which were both alerted to the matter by concerned Temescal beachgoer Donna Chapin. Heal the Bay’s Gold used that incident during last week’s press conference to urge local governments to maintain their diversions. ‘Temescal and Castle Rock both have dry-weather diversions, but clearly greater effort to operate and maintain these facilities is needed,’ read the report. ‘If you don’t properly maintain them, they don’t work,’ Gold said. Local beaches also benefited from a lack of sewage spills this summer. According to the city’s Department of Public Works, only one sewage backup in the Palisades entered the city’s storm drains. About 2,244 gallons would have emptied onto Will Rogers Beach if a county-operated diversion in Las Pulgas Canyon had not successfully rerouted the hazardous flow back into the sewer system on August 1. Earlier this winter and spring, multiple spills originating from the Palisades brought tens of thousands of gallons of sewage to local beaches. The city and county do not reroute storm-drain runoff from November through March, defined as the ‘wet period’ of the year. —– To contact Staff Writer Max Taves, e-mail reporter@palipost.com or call (310) 454-1321 ext. 28.