Annual Summer Beach Report Shows General
Improvement for Local Waters
• Only One Malibu Beach Makes Top Ten
‘Worst’ List
Heal the Bay’s annual report on the
health of the state’s coastline offers Malibu a good
news, bad news scenario.
Only one local beach made the top ten beach
bummers list. That is in sharp contrast to some years when
several Malibu beaches made the list. The Marie Canyon drain at
Puerco Beach, which did make the list this year, did so,
according to Los Angeles County officials, because a
stormwater treatment plant that was to remedy the
situation broke down after the fires and has been offline since
then. Repairs for the facility are expected to be completed by
next month.
The eighteenth annual report
indicated Malibu had some very good stretches of
clean ocean water quality.
“There were some stretches of very
good to excellent summer water quality in western Malibu from
Leo Carrillo to Topanga with the exception of Marie Canyon
drain at Puerco Beach,” the report states.
However, poor grades for year-round dry
weather were received in Paradise Cove, Escondido Creek, Marie
Canyon, Surfrider Beach and Big Rock Beach.
Overall for the entire state, the 2007-2008
annual beach report showed the best overall water quality on
record, according to the Heal the Bay. Most California beaches
had very good water quality, with 330 of 379 locations
receiving very-good-to-excellent grades for the year during dry
weather.
The environmental organization noted that
overall improvement was most likely due to the historic drought
experienced during the past winter.
However, Los Angeles County still had the
state’s lowest grades, with only 71 percent, but that
marked a solid improvement from last year’s grades,
according to Heal the Bay.
One of the reasons that Los Angeles County
had the worst water quality grades in the state, according to
the group, is that the county is one of the first in the state
along with Humboldt County to modify its monitoring
program to collect samples directly in front of flowing storm
drains and creeks.
Also new for the past beach season was
every beach from the Ventura County line south to Palos Verdes
was mandated to meet state beach bacteria health standards 100
percent of the time from April 1 to October 31.
The compliance came and went and two of
Malibu’s beaches still had elevated bacteria levels above
the threshold—Surfrider and Marie Canyon.
Dischargers are subject to fines of over $10,000 per day per
violation.
Last March, the Los Angeles Regional
Water Quality Control Board sent strongly worded notices
of violation and orders to 20 cities, including Malibu, to
clean up those beaches. The municipalities are
threatened with fines of up to $10,000 per day per violation.
Heal the Bay said the action marks the first time nationally
that a regulatory body has threatened fines to ensure
cities’ compliance with beach bacteria limits.
The report also noted the consistently
polluted waters of Paradise Cove because of runoff from
Ramirez Canyon and what it alleges is pollution from the
Paradise Cove mobilehome park.
“The park has been in violation of
water quality laws for two decades. Two time-scheduled
orders have been violated and the required rebuild of the
on-site wastewater treatment facility is still not fully
operational and in compliance with the requirements nearly
one-and-half years after the latest deadlines,” the
report notes.
Heal the Bay complains the enforcement
efforts by the Los Angeles County District
Attorney’s office and the RWCQB have also been
foiled. The group states those missteps send a signal to
polluters about the lack of consequences for their actions.
Heal the Bay is starting up a new text
messaging service that will allow ocean users to get real-time
water quality grades right on the spot.
The environmental organization
provides grades for more than 500 beaches. They have decided to
kick off an ad campaign with news spots and billboards at 30
lifeguard towers in Los Angeles County, many placed in Malibu.
The sign warns the water could be
“icky” and then posts a text code for that specific
beach that a mobile user could type in to get information.
