Heal the Bay Blog

Author: Heal the Bay

Thank You Thursday – 2.7.13

02.07.2013 | Heal the Bay

What better time to thank the First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald, than Valentine week. Find a recording of Ella singing “My Funny Valentine,” you’ll soon discover what we mean….

But we love Ella for more than just her three-octave range. We also love Ella because a few years before she passed away in 1996, she formed the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation to help create educational opportunities for children.

Her foundation recently funded resources for our “Lunch ‘n Learn” field trip program (pictured left) to help foster a love of the ocean in students from regional schools. Each year, Heal the Bay provides marine education through Lunch ‘n Learn to 500 underserved Title 1 students, bussing them to Duke’s Malibu for a day of beach exploration and learning games.

Although we live in Southern California, winter mornings at the shore can still be chilly. We’d like to thank Venice Ale House owner Tom Elliot for serving free hot coffee to our Nothin’ But Sand volunteers who’d gathered in January to clean up Venice Beach.( Some of us at Heal the Bay also appreciate the spirit-warming benefits of Venice Ale House’s selection of craft beers… one pint at a time!)

White sharks off our California coast are safer now, thanks to your advocacy efforts. We are grateful to all of you who signed and shared our petition supporting the listing of the Northeastern Pacific population of white sharks as endangered or threatened. Yesterday, the Fish and Game Commission unanimously voted this population of white shark to candidacy under the CA Endangered Species Act. This is an exciting decision! Thank you for your support!

Learn more about our science-based educational efforts. Lunch’ n Learn is just the beginning!

Warm your heart and come to our next Nothin But Sand beach cleanup on Saturday, February 16, 10 a.m.-Noon at Will Rogers State Beach.

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California's White Sharks Head for Safety

02.07.2013 | Heal the Bay

About Us California Sharks News

In a step towards better understanding whether our local white shark population needs protection, the Fish and Game Commission unanimously advanced the Northeastern Pacific population of white shark to candidacy on February 6 under the California Endangered Species Act. This means that Department of Fish and Wildlife staff will spend the next year collecting data and assessing whether a threatened or endangered species listing is merited for this species.

As a wide-roaming, apex predator, it’s hard to get a strong understanding of white shark population estimates and trends. Some studies estimate that the adult population count in the Northeastern Pacific is in the hundreds of individuals, while other research shows that numbers may be on the increase in the past few years. White sharks are slow to mature and reproduce, so changes at the population level can take time.

Southern California is an important spot for juvenile white sharks. They’ve been spotted off Redondo and Sunset Beaches as well as Malibu, and some have even been caught by anglers in the Bay – most recently off Venice Pier and Manhattan Beach Pier. But, they are vulnerable to ongoing threats, such as incidental catch, pollution, and other issues along our coast, and we don’t have a comprehensive sense of how their population is faring. This effort over the next year will help better understand how these sharks are doing in our local waters and throughout their range, and identify any protection that may be needed.

Stay tuned for updates and how you can engage. Meanwhile, keep your eyes on the water – you might just be lucky enough to spot one of these elusive elasmobranchs.

–– Sarah Sikich

Coastal Resources Director, Heal the Bay

Want to learn more about these mysterious creatures? Join us for Shark Sundays at our Santa Monica Pier Aquarium.

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What Teens Really Learn at the Aquarium

02.06.2013 | Heal the Bay

About Us Heal the Bay Aquarium

“We were so ready for this because the teachers at the Aquarium made us comfortable with being in the real ocean. We knew we were safe.”

So said one of my middle school students after snorkeling last spring at the Catalina Island Marine Institute (CIMI).

I had wondered how my young student scientists would respond. Would they cringe away from the speeding seals, flee in terror from the bloody sight of top smelt being devoured, or be thrilled to their very marrow at the physical proximity of wild marine mammals?

As three young harbor seals closely tore through our group of swimmers, in pursuit of the bait ball we ourselves had been trailing, my heart warmed as my young scientists responded with wonder and awe instead of fear or confusion. Joy, tempered with an accurate understanding of ocean food webs, had prepared them, quite literally, to dive deeply into marine science with an invigorating boldness that belied their youth. My adolescent students relished this potentially scary encounter, despite the cold water, sense of risk, and hard work such experiential learning can entail because they had personal experience of the ocean and strong content knowledge gained through frequent visits to the Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium.

As I reflect on 10 years of teaching and learning in partnership with the stellar staff at Heal the Bay’s pier aquarium, my student’s acquisition of this knowledge based confidence, experience based competence, and persistent engagement with Southern California’s marine environments is the most obvious reward. However, this yearly educational series offered by Aquarium staff to my students at Santa Monica Alternative School House, is merely the tip of a large iceberg. Heal the Bay staff have cheerfully deployed their generous souls again and again when confronted with young people who needed lessons more important then genus and species names.

Four brief examples make it clear that marine science is just one of this talented staff’s specialties: Heal the Bay Education Director Tara Treiber acted as a personal mentor to two young girls who were “lost” in some adult’s estimation. She found places for them to intern, followed their progress, and poured a current of caring over them, washing them safely back in the direction of health and productivity. Both are thriving in their schools now and one of the two has taking up scuba diving so she may remain close to the ocean she professes to love. A better example of “just in time” mentoring of adolescents could not be found, as this was definitively a turning point for these girls. Viewed from the comfortable perspective of time, a turning point that turned positive! The girl’s parents would tell you that the relationships formed at the Aquarium with the people of Heal the Bay “saved” them.

Nick Fash [Aquarium Education Specialist] is cited by at least three former students as the inspiration for their marine biology related majors at college. A fourth student now at Georgetown is considering environmental law, similarly influenced by Heal the Bay’s philosophy of science-based activism and his experience testifying at public hearings. Amanda Jones’ (also an Aquarium educator) teaching continues to elicit promises from perennially distracted and rowdy 8^th graders to make “perfect choices” as she makes things “so interesting.”

Three teenage girls still covered in the mud, scratches, and grime from plant removal activities in the Malibu Creek watershed vowed to be “to be scientists just like Sarah Sikich [Heal the Bay’s Coastal Resources Director].” Personal generosity, woven into professional people of accomplishment, who care far beyond their job descriptions, is central to my experience of partnering with the Aquarium over the last 10 years and a magnificent starting point for considering the next 10. I would swim with these fine people anywhere!

Next, I’ll share some of the stories of science-based activism that my students and Heal the Bay have partnered on over the years.

— Kurt Holland, middle school teacher at SMASH

As we commemorate a decade operating our Aquarium, we’re highlighting our history as well as previewing our plans for the NEXT 10 years.

If you haven’t already, come visit our Aquarium, located on the Santa Monica Pier, just below the carousel. Join us the first weekend of March to celebrate our 10-year anniversary!

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Follow the “Heart of Los Angeles”

02.05.2013 | Heal the Bay

About Us

Of course I knew about the Los Angeles River. Growing up for a few years right next to the huge concrete channel and biking near Griffith Park where it is lush and green, I had seen the L.A. River be both storm drain ditch and real natural river. But these two faces, these two memories were separated by more than 10 years of living, and there are few things more enlightening like learning the context, the backstory of the places we thought we were already familiar with.

This past Sunday, on the recommendation of a coworker, I took the “Tour the L.A. River” tour hosted by Jenny Price and organized by Hidden Los Angeles. Jenny Price is an environmental writer and longtime advocate of river revitalization efforts. Hidden LA was started by Lynn Garrett as an effort to break down the stereotype of LA as characterless city with no beauty or depth – a perspective sometimes promulgated by us Angelenos.

The tour is a nine-stop, 40-mile tour by carpool caravan, down local side streets and sometimes shady parking spots. At each stop, Jenny Price gives history and context of the river as it flows down from its headwaters through both concrete-channels and soft-bottom, natural spaces.

“Think of your favorite place to visit, think of your favorite place to eat,” Jenny begins. “None of those places, none of us, in fact would be here if it wasn’t for the L.A. River. Yet people still laugh at the notion that L.A. has a real river.”

Jenny also makes sure to dispel common myths. “L.A. is not a desert!” Sure, we have a Mediterranean and semi-arid climate, but when the Spanish came to the basin from the north they found what they described as a ‘lush green valley’, ideal for agriculture and perfect to establish a settlement.” Quite a bit different from the hazy city-skyline and congested freeways we normally imagine when we think of our city.

The L.A. River is the reason the city exists, its waters were the life-blood that nurtured the city’s growth. Yet for all our dependence, as a whole we treat it as an outcast, good only as a movie lot or watery trash chute ending at the ocean –L.A.’s pariah.

But there is hope, the designation by the EPA in 2010 of the river as a “traditional navigable waterway”, has opened a series of regulatory enforcement that means city, state and federal agencies must begin to treat the river like any other natural river and not simply a flood control channel.

During the tour, Jenny pointed out the projects that are part of the larger LA City’s River Revitalization Master Plan, a plan designed to rehabilitate LA communities by revitalizing the river, creating value, capturing community opportunities and greening neighborhoods. One of the stops, Marsh Park, was engineered to double as a stormwater infiltration zone, capturing runoff from the nearby neighborhoods treating and infiltrating the water instead of dumping it directly into the river. We also stopped at Maywood Riverfront park, where Jenny talked about the great environmental and economic benefits revitalizing the river can bring to park starved neighborhoods such as Maywood. Amongst our group was Cassie Gardener of East Yards Communities for Environmental Justice who talked about the disproportionate health effects on inland communities from the major freeway (I-710) and nearby transportation corridor (Alameda Corridor).

Under a similar vision of bridging environmental and social issues, Heal the Bay is endeavoring a similar project in South LA. The WAYS Reading and Fitness Park is designed to be a multi-benefit park that will serve as an outdoor classroom, community green space, fitness area, and a water quality improvement project for the watershed and for a community that is already desperately lacking park space.

Our tour ended with a visit to the Dominguez Gap Wetlands, a roughly mile-long stretch of wetland habitat project of the LA County Flood Control District designed to “return important ecological functions of water quality improvement, wildlife habitat, and aquifer recharge to the urban lower Los Angeles River.” Nearing the end of the day, a walk along mile-long stretch of native and aquatic plants and water is striking reminder of what the concrete channel it runs alongside must have looked like to the settlers of the valley. Watching the lush Dominguez Gap wetlands rub shoulders with the concrete L.A. river was a strikingly succinct summary of the whole tour.

Walking along the river sometimes we walked along sunlit jogging paths with native California sage, and sometimes we walked down dirty foreboding tunnels underneath roaring train tracks.

We’ve treated the river well, poorly, and even worse at different places. Revitalizing the LA River is about breathing life into the heart that connects all of Los Angeles, and ultimately about revitalizing our own communities and collectively our city.

Thanks go out to Jenny Price and Hidden LA for organizing an eye-opening and fantastic trip down history and time. I highly recommend taking the tour yourself and ultimately doing what Jenny asked of us who took the tour that day: “Tell someone about the river! Tell them to come and see it for themselves.”

— Stephen Mejia

Heal the Bay’s Urban Programs Coordinator

Come to the Los Angeles River Center March 5-19 for Heal the Bay’s Speakers Bureau training and help spread the word about solutions to pollution.

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Something Wicked This Way Comes… Weeds!

02.01.2013 | Heal the Bay

About Us Malibu / Pacific Palisades Santa Monica

They’re exotic, and not in a good way, but why should you care about weeds? If you want to hang on to your favorite local nature spots, constant maintenance and eradication of these non-native, invasive plants, a.k.a. weeds, is an absolute necessity.

Here’s a primer, written by Tim Rosenstein, Mountains Restoration Trust Project Manager, on the problem with weeds.

Plants will often have natural defenses that keep them from being eaten by anything that hasn’t developed the tools necessary to take advantage. Plus there are simply huge physiological differences between species, which means an insect that can feed on one part of one type of plant, say soft leaves, won’t be able to eat a different sort of plant with hard, waxy leaves.

The result of a diversity of plants then is a diversity of insects or varying specialty. Each plant supports a varying number of insects, some of which will feed on other plants, some of which will only feed on that plant. This diversity of herbivorous insects will then support a diversity of carnivorous insects, and the insects support small animals, which support other animals, etc., etc., you get the picture.

Weeds, because they evolved elsewhere, don’t support many insects. An infestation of weeds therefore decreases the amount and diversity of insects, which decreases the amount of small animals, which decreases larger animals, etc., etc., you get the same picture but this time in reverse. For a specific example the “common reed” Phragmites australis, an East Coast invasive that’s been studied extensively, supports 170 species of insects in its native Europe. Here in the U.S. it only supports five insect species.

Weeds Alter Natural Cycles

These “exotics” destroy habitat almost as completely as paving it over does. If weeds take over a landscape that area just isn’t going to support much wildlife, and it’s the interaction of wildlife and plants that make an ecosystem work (for more on this concept search the web for ‘ecosystem services’).

But that’s not all! Weeds can also change natural fire cycles, affecting the frequency and intensity of fires. Plus weeds interrupt natural succession cycles after disturbances like fire. When there’s a fire in a stand of coastal sage scrub, what naturally happens is the first thing to pop up are fire-following annuals like grasses and wildflowers, things you don’t see much except after a fire.

These will dominate for a few years and the area will effectively be like a grassland until other non-fire-following plants and shrubs start to come up; bigger, longer-lived plants that, while sometimes present in mature coastal sage scrub, are not very common. These plants will proliferate and become more common for a while but eventually the dominant plants (sages, buckwheat, coyotebrush and the like) will reassert themselves and suppress the other species. That’s how it normally works. When weeds are present however this is how it works: After the fire weeds sprout first and dominate everything forever and ever the end.

Weeds Starve Natives

OK, I’m being slightly dramatic. But only slightly. Here’s another problem with weeds: They suppress the germination of native seeds. Many weeds have allelopathic properties, meaning they produce chemicals that affect the lifecycle of other plants. So not only do weeds germinate more and get established earlier than natives, starving natives of water and nutrients, they chemically suppress the germination and growth of natives as well.

They also suppress the germination of native fungal spores. This is exceedingly important because much of our native plant life requires the help of what’s called mycorrhizal fungi in order to survive. It’s a symbiotic relationship– the fungi needs the plants and the plants need the fungi– and a hugely important biotic component in a Mediterranean climate such as ours. Weeds can suppress the germination of the fungal spores and the growth of the fungus itself, effectively killing the very soil they grow in, making it that much harder for any native to ever grow there again. So when I say: “Weeds sprout first and dominate everything forever and ever the end,” I’m just barely exaggerating.

Sometimes people will ask me why we don’t just let “nature take its course” and let the weeds grow until a balance is reached. The thing is invasive species take over, that’s why they’re called “invasive.” There is no natural process by which an ecosystem can rid itself of weeds. Habitat is degraded when they enter the system, outright destroyed when they dominate it.

It is actually very much like cancer in a body, there is no “balance” to be had; either you fight the weeds or you let them win, there’s not much in between. I don’t want to be too dramatic but next to habitat loss from development the second greatest cause of habitat destruction is invasive species. Weeds, those innocent looking plants from the other side of the world, are pretty much an ecological nightmare.

Next up: We answer the crucial question; “How did weeds get here in the first place?”

Ready to help rid Malibu Creek of these harrowing invasives? Sign up now to volunteer on Sunday, February 10. If you can’t make it, no worries. Check Heal the Bay’s Calendar of Events for upcoming restorations.

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Thank You Thursday – 1.31.13

01.31.2013 | Heal the Bay

About Us Long Beach / Avalon Malibu / Pacific Palisades Marina del Rey / Playa del Rey More Ways to Give Palos Verdes Peninsula Santa Monica South Bay Venice Beach

Free Bird! You might be grateful to hear your favorite band cover this song…or not.

At Heal the Bay, we can say without irony that we are grateful to Freebirds in Agoura Hills for teaming with us to restore the Malibu Creek Watershed in January. Not only did a group of Freebirders join us, but they surprised us and brought burritos! It was an awesome day, pulling weeds, planting mulefat, eating burritos. Thank you, Freebirds!

A big thanks to the Gesso Foundation for their longtime support of our Key to the Sea program. Due in large part to their generosity, we’ve successfully provided thousands of Los Angeles County-based students and their teachers (K-5^th grade) with high-impact environmental education and memorable field trip experiences. For many of these students, participation in the program marked their first chance to explore the beach environment and witness marine life up close!

The Gesso Foundation was created in accordance with the wishes expressed in the will of acclaimed artist Frank Moore, who died in 2002. The Foundation’s purpose is twofold: to preserve, protect, and expand awareness of Frank Moore’s art; and to support non-profit organizations devoted to the arts, social justice, environmental or AIDS-related causes. Morphing Swallow by artist-philanthropist Frank Moore

Much like Mary Poppins herself, moms rely on Mommy Poppins LA, consulting the site for non-boring, low-cost activities to do with kids. Meanwhile Heal the Bay and our Aquarium couldn’t spread the word about our kid-friendly, fun AND educational happenings without their help. As parents and as youth educators, we thank the staff at Mommy Poppins LA for being such a helpful resource.

Do you devote your free time to volunteer with Heal the Bay? Then it’s time for us to thank YOU. Please join us on February 19 at Bodega Wine Bar as we celebrate you and all that you do to help protect our Bay…and beyond.

Join us to help revive Malibu Creek by removing weeds and planting natives on February 10.

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Join Our Elite Pollution Fighting Team

01.28.2013 | Heal the Bay

About Us Long Beach / Avalon Malibu / Pacific Palisades Marina del Rey / Playa del Rey Palos Verdes Peninsula Santa Monica South Bay Venice Beach

Do you care about clean water in your community? Love putting on a show? Want to make change (not just the money kind)?

Join our elite Speakers Bureau team to help raise educational awareness across Los Angeles in schools, workplaces and social groups.

For more than 25 years, Heal the Bay has relied upon people just like you to help spread the word about ocean pollution.

Last year we were able to reach 55,000 people! Obviously, we can’t do this on our own: We need you!

Our winter training sessions begin on Tuesday, March 5, 1-4:30 p.m. at the Los Angeles River Center. Sessions run through the month on Tuesdays in March (the 12^th and the 19^th), with a talk on Saturday, March 16, 9:30 a.m.-noon at Venice Pier. Attendance at all sessions is mandatory.

Register for Winter Speakers Bureau Training.

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Way to Go, Glendale!

01.24.2013 | Heal the Bay

About Us California Bag Ban News

It’s official: The Glendale City Council just voted to adopt a single-use bag ordinance. With this unanimous vote, Glendale becomes one of the largest inland communities to ban plastic bags in California.

Modeled after the 2011 L.A. County ordinance, Glendale’s version will become effective on Jan. 1, 2014, and applies to grocery stores, large pharmacies, and most convenience stores. Farmer’s markets, city-sponsored events or any event held on city property will also be prohibited from distributing single-use plastic bags.

Learn more about the ordinance.

Why are plastic bags so bad? Read our Plastic Bag 101 to find out.

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One Wily Octopus, 200 Gallons of Spilled Water

01.23.2013 | Heal the Bay

About Us Heal the Bay Aquarium Santa Monica

One of the first changes Heal the Bay made 10 years ago when becoming owners of the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium was to retire an underutilized gift shop in the Aquarium, converting the space into the Kids’ Corner. This section of the Aquarium has been through several renovations since its unveiling in 2003, but it still remains a comfy area in the marine education center where families can read marine themed books, commune with some of the smaller creatures of the Bay displayed in kid-friendly tanks, stage a puppet show or enjoy games and puzzles.

No matter the various upgrades of the surrounding décor, the Kids’ Corner is best known as the home of the wily octopus that figured out how to push the flow valve out of its tank one February night in 2009. When staff walked in the next morning, we were up to our ankles in water – approximately 200 gallons of seawater soaked the Kids’ Corner and the staff offices.

The flood harmed none of the Aquarium’s animals, but this tiny cephalopod – weighing about a pound – caused major damage to flooring and cabinetry and produced a flood of another sort, attracting tons of media attention and record-breaking visitors’ attendance. We ran a kids’ essay and art contest, encouraging students to come up with a narrative of what went on in the Aquarium the night of flood. Art work and stories decorated our walls for weeks.

Today, the Kids’ Corner features an ever-changing lineup of local species, displayed in six porthole shaped tanks.

Peer into the “holdfast haven” exhibit, for example, for a close look at the root-like structure, known as a holdfast, which is the anchor of the giant kelp. Chances are a keen eye will see a collection of crustaceans called Hemphill’s kelp crabs. Their first pair of walking legs is exceptionally long, and covered with numerous curved hairs. They decorate this pair of legs with kelp, grass, algae and other organisms. When feeling threatened, this crab will raise one of its adorned legs and hold it horizontally as a shield between itself and a predator. The Hemphill’s kelp crabs were just added to the holdfast, also home to brittle stars, snails and other tiny organisms. Visitors are charmed by their antics, but at least weekly someone will ask: “whatever happened to that octopus that flooded the Aquarium?”

— Randi Parent, Aquarium Outreach Manager

An employee of the Aquarium since Heal the Bay took over the marine education facility in 2003, Randi is writing a series of blogs highlighting the SMPA’s 10-year history and previewing our plans.

If you haven’t already, come visit the Kids Corner of our Aquarium, located on the Santa Monica Pier, just below the carousel. Join us the first weekend of March to celebrate the Aquarium’s 10-year anniversary!

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We Know Where We're Headed in 2013

01.23.2013 | Heal the Bay

Beach Report Card California Bag Ban Long Beach / Avalon Malibu / Pacific Palisades Marina del Rey / Playa del Rey Marine Protected Areas More Ways to Give Palos Verdes Peninsula Santa Monica South Bay Venice Beach

As representatives of Heal the Bay, we often get asked: “Is the bay healed yet?” People know we’ve been at this a long time (more than 25 years). While the answer is a qualified “yes,” we still work every day to fulfill our mission to make southern California’s coastal waters and watersheds, including Santa Monica Bay safe, healthy and clean. Our tools? Science, education, community action and advocacy.

Each year we discuss where we’ve been, where we’re headed and how we’re going to get there. It’s a valuable process requiring that we all know what our HtB colleagues are up to: whether we’re teaching school kids at our Aquarium, coordinating our next advocacy campaign or analyzing water samples in Malibu Creek.

Here’s what we came up with for our goals of 2013:

Science

Marine Protected Areas and Fisheries

In 2013, we plan to continue to build our MPA Watch program. We will review data collected by MPA Watch volunteers and interns, and share it with management, enforcement, and other monitoring agencies to help understand and evaluate how local Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are being used. We also plan to inform and evaluate the development of fisheries management plans for key southern California fisheries, including spiny lobster. Additionally, in 2013, we will work with local and statewide partners to advance the statewide sustainable seafood policy developed by the Ocean Protection Council (with Heal the Bay’s involvement) and local efforts to promote sustainable seafood. On the education front, we are playing a leadership role in creating new MPA curriculum for teachers with the Southern California Aquarium Collaborative.

Stream Team

Heal the Bay will continue to develop our Stream Team program. We plan to begin evaluating watershed impacts associated with agricultural development in the Santa Monica Mountains, including vineyards. Additionally, we hope to inspire residents and recreationists in the watershed to become Creek Stewards, and help scout for watershed health impacts throughout these mountains.

Malibu Creek Watershed

We will educate local partner groups and management agencies about the findings of Heal the Bay’s State of the Malibu Creek Watershed report. We will also work with watershed partners and policymakers to prioritize and implement recommendations detailed in the report aimed at improving local stream and watershed health.

Predicting Beach Water Quality

Heal the Bay will continue our partnership with Stanford University in developing a predictive beach water quality models. The models will use oceanic and atmospheric factors (i.e. tides, waves, temperature, wind direction etc.) as inputs to forecast indicator bacteria concentrations at beaches, as means of providing early “nowcast” warnings of human health risks (our current methods take 18-24 hours to process, leaving the public with day-old water quality information). We plan to develop simple models for 25 different California beaches that will rapidly “predict” when beaches are in or out of compliance with water quality standards. Additionally, these models will be helpful in identifying and prioritizing beach cleanup and abatement priorities.

Education

Youth Summits

To take student learning beyond the classroom into community action and civic engagement, Heal the Bay will organize more youth summits. Students learn how to protect what they love through adjusting their own behavior, speaking publicly to businesses and governments and educating others in their local communities. This year we will focus on scheduling these events quarterly, formalizing their structure, and expanding their reach throughout Los Angeles County high schools.

Teacher Opportunities

Heal the Bay will expand our teacher education and professional development opportunities in 2013. New workshops and field experiences will be offered to help increase teacher expertise in teaching environmental principles and concepts, marine and watershed science knowledge, and best practices for melding field and laboratory activities into their own classroom curricula.

Santa Monica Pier Aquarium

To further educate the 75,000-80,000 annual visitors to the Aquarium about water conservation, we plan to overhaul the Green Room, named after Heal the Bay’s founding president Dorothy Green, with a new exhibit in her honor. The education room will include interactive, bilingual exhibits on watershed education and the urban water cycle, as well as a space dedicated to Dorothy’s accomplishments and inspirational vision.

Classroom Enrichment

In 2013, we’ll expand our environmental education outreach to more low-income communities and to a wider range of age groups. Through our partnership with the Discovery by Nature program, we’ll be able to reach classrooms in underserved communities, where public education in the sciences — as well as field trip funding — are limited.

Advocacy

A “Yes” for Clean Beaches

In the new year, Heal the Bay will mobilize support for the Clean Waters, Clean Beaches funding measure, which will drive an extensive and multi-faceted water quality clean up and conservation program in Los Angeles County. The proposed measure would address contaminated drinking water, polluted stormwater runoff as well as toxins and trash in the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers, among other challenges.

Plastic Bag Bans

In 2013, we will take a leadership role in advocating for a strong single-use bag ordinance for the City of Los Angeles that is consistent with several other policies adopted by local governments in the area. We will work with partner groups and City Council offices to conduct outreach to the community about the pending ordinance, and ensure that a final policy is adopted that eliminates single-use plastic bag usage in the City at grocery stores, pharmacies, and convenience stores, and greatly reduces paper bag distribution from these locations.

Community Action

Zero Waste Cleanups

In 2013, Heal the Bay plans to run all Nothin’ But Sand monthly beach cleanups as Zero Waste events. Building upon the success of the 2012 Zero Waste cleanups in October and November, we shall focus this year on not generating excessive waste in the process of performing large-scale public volunteer events. The hope is that the public will witness our commitment to practicing what we advocate, by going reusable and minimizing trash.

Compton Creek

Heal the Bay, in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Goldhirsh Foundation, will complete a project to build trash capture devices in the concrete portion of Compton Creek, just upstream of the earthen-bottom, riparian section. Compton Creek is the last major tributary that feeds into the Los Angeles River before it ultimately reaches the ocean in Long Beach. The devices ‑- adjustable metal racks that will be bolted into the channel bottom — will capture trash from dry weather urban runoff and low volume producing storm events and go a long way toward improving water quality.

A Park in South L.A.

Heal the Bay is partnering with Wisdom Academy for Young Scientists (WAYS) Charter School to complete the construction of the WAYS Reading & Fitness Park on the site of 4,000-square feet of unused City land in 2013. This park, located at the intersection of McKinley Avenue and 87th Street in South Los Angeles, will be on the leading edge of green technology, recycling street water to irrigate its own landscape.

Help us reach our goals this year, donate now and keep the field trips, advocacy campaigns and water testing afloat!

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