LA Beaches In Need of Quality Control 0
Last week Heal The Bay released their 19th annual Beach Report Card, and the report finds that the City of Angeles holds the unenviable distinction of possessing the most polluted beaches in California. Oh boy! With A-to-F letter grades assigned to 94 beaches, 15 of them received year-round F grades, with six ranking in Heal the Bay’s annual Beach Bummer List of the most polluted sites in the state. The good news—if there is any—is that 70% of sites earned A or B grades, a state-low total for the fourth year in a row and nearly even with last year’s 71% tally. You can thank chronically polluted beaches in Malibu, Santa Monica, Avalon and Long Beach for dragging down the county’s overall grades.
“You go surf around here and sometimes the water just stinks, you can tell something’s not right. It’s gross,” says Theodore Sawyer, an L.A.-area surfer who just moved from the pristine Monterey Bay area to the not-so-pristine Venice Beach. “You’d think a place who’s image is based on the beach would be more into preserving the environment.”
That being said, there are alternatives our there. Proving that Orange County is home to more than just scandalous housewives, O.C. beaches recorded outstanding water quality grades, well above the state average. Some 97% of 103 monitoring locations received an A or B during the summer, as well as 93% for year-round dry weather.
And just north of L.A.—where, in the words of Sam George, a man can be free—Ventura County also seems to be taking care of its coast. Of the 53 beaches monitored, 51 locations received A grades. Moving up the coast, more than 90% of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo beaches earned A or B grades during year-round dry weather. Santa Cruz saw 83% of its beaches record A grades year-round. Further north, San Mateo notched perfect 100% A grades at its 11 sites, while San Francisco earned 93%. Marin, Mendocino and Humboldt counties earned perfect 100% summer grades, while Sonoma recorded A or B grades for more than 85% of its beaches.
Of course, with the good has to come the bad, and as of press time Ventura has ceased ocean testing at all beaches since October in the wake of the state budget crisis, which eliminated all funds to support counties’ regular ocean testing. Orange County officials also may decrease sampling if state funding isn’t made available by July.
“With summer coming, the state has made assurances that it will start restoring funding to beach monitoring programs, but there is no firm date,” said Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay. “Until then, swimmers in many locations in greater Southern California are truly swimming at their own risk.
Most California beaches had very good water quality with 262 of 307 (85%) locations receiving very good to excellent (A and B) grades, while only 32 of the beaches (6%) monitored statewide received D or F grades. High bacteria counts at these sites are linked to such potential illnesses as stomach flu, ear infections and major skin rashes.
The Top 10 Beach Bummers
Twenty-three beaches statewide received an overall “F” grade in year-round dry weather during the 2008-2009 Beach Report Card. The ten worst “Beach Bummers” in California (starting with the worst) are:
- Avalon Harbor Beach on Catalina Island (Los Angeles County)
- Cabrillo Beach harborside (Los Angeles County)
- Pismo Beach Pier (San Luis Obispo County)
- Colorado Lagoon (Los Angeles County)
- Santa Monica Municipal Pier (Los Angeles County)
- City of Long Beach at LA River outlet (Los Angeles County)
- Poche Beach (Orange County)
- Surfrider Beach at Malibu Creek (Los Angeles County)
- Campbell Cove State Park Beach (Sonoma County)
- Doheny Beach at San Juan Creek (Orange County)
For a detailed look at beach results for each county and report methodology, please refer to our complete report. A PDF version is available at www.healthebay.org
Honor Roll Some 79 of the 324 (24%) beaches with year-round dry weather grades this year scored a perfect A+. These beaches had zero exceedances of state bacterial standards for ocean water quality throughout the entire time frame of this report. Heal the Bay proudly places these beaches on our inaugural Beach Report Card Honor Roll. A list of these locations can be found in the full report.