What’s With the Black Rock?

This spring, the Palisadian-Post published a letter from Dennis Richardson asking if we could find out who was responsible for using heavy equipment at the beach to lay down “tons and tons of black rock where water runs off at Santa Monica Canyon at Chautauqua. Last summer it was very difficult swimming and tough for kids to play in the water because all of the black sharp rocks washed out of the channel and spread down the beach along the water line. If they do this year after year, the build-up of rocks will be so great that it will completely ruin our sandy beaches along the waterfront.” Richardson insisted that the county has “again put tons and tons of these rocks at the mouth of the runoff, I imagine to stem the erosion of sand. But for years and years this was never an issue. Sand runs out into the bay and the tides bring it back up. I think there are simply men who like to play on the heavy equipment, moving around the sand and rocks, not giving a care to the millions and millions of beachgoers who frequent the beach during the summer. Even if it were round rocks, they should not fill up the bay and beaches with rocks.” According to Joe Chesler, division chief, County Beaches and Harbors, the black rock which straddles both sides of the trench at the base of the channel which leads directly into the ocean at Will Rogers State Beach is simply “natural runoff that comes down from the canyon and flows through the channel and accumulates there.” However, to stop the accumulation of black rock from blocking the channel it apparently was dredged out sometime in February and then dumped on both sides of the trench to “to keep the sand from filling up the channel,” added Chesler. Mark Gold, head of Heal the Bay, said he would “prefer to see the trench filled with sand during the summer months instead of the filthy runoff that usually accumulates there due to the faulty low-flow diversion system at the base of the canyon.” Because of the faulty system, water and debris “routinely” escape from both the berm and the drain, earning the water at that beach an F, “making it the second most polluted beach in California,” explained Gold. “We met with the county recently and again suggested filling in the channel with sand, thereby eliminating the nuisance flows during the dry season. They will look into this.” Efforts have been stepped up in recent weeks to divert the flow of polluted water and debris coming down the channel as both the city and the county are under the gun to meet water-quality standards by July 15, after which both will be susceptible to fines’up to $32,500 a day’under the Clean Water Act. “When the diversion works like it is supposed to, this beach should get an A,” said Gold, who told the Palisadian-Post in an e-mail that “The County Department of Public Works swears that it [black rock] is from upstream in the watershed and it washed down.”