At a hearing today, Judge James Chalfant upheld L.A. County’s plastic bag ordinance.
The Court found that the County’s proposed 10-cent paper bag charge was not a tax under the California Constitution because retailers keep all of the money collected pursuant to the ordinance, and even if the charge were a tax, it would be considered exempt to Prop 26.
While an appeal is expected, this decision is encouraging for California cities moving forward with their own plastic bag ordinances.
Overwatering is wasteful and moves trash and toxins to the ocean. Turn off the faucet when you don’t need it. Fix leaky pipes and install low-flow shower heads and toilets. By conserving water, you can put less stress on sewage treatment plants and allow them to do a better job.
Help heal the Bay, don’t be a drip!
We will be uploading a short video about each of the 10 Ways you can heal the Bay over the coming months, so keep an eye on our YouTube Channel.
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2012 is the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, the nation’s law for protecting our most irreplaceable resource.
This year EPA and others will highlight the tremendous progress in reducing pollution since 1972, the many milestones along the way, the ways that the job is far from over and the tough challenges we face today and in the future. To mark 40 Years of the Clean Water Act, the EPA has set up a central location for information, activities, news and networking at www.epa.gov/cleanwater40.
You can also find the Office of Water on Facebook.
Heal the Bay celebrates each Earth Day in a big way — by turning it into a whole month. For the entire month of April, we ensure that “Earth Day is every day.” Our month is chock-full of great events for all ages — cleanups, tablings and more. We welcome volunteers to join us in April to get their hands dirty, meet a few new friends in the community and learn all about the Santa Monica Bay at our Aquarium.
To check out our upcoming opportunities, download our Earth Month flyer:
Volunteer Orientation – April 9When: Monday April 9, 7 – 9 p.m. Where: Heal the Bay Main Office, Large Conference Room, 1444 9th St, Santa Monica, CA 90401 Get started by attending one of our monthly Volunteer Orientations. Learn more about Heal the Bay, our mission, and the many ways that you can get involved. Orientation is an important first step (and required for some volunteer programs). |
Malibu Creek State Park Restoration – April 14When: April 14, 8:45 a.m. to Noon Where: Malibu Creek State Park, 1925 Las Virgenes Road, Calabasas Join Heal the Bay and the Mountains Restoration Trust to restore areas of Malibu Creek State Park. |
Nothin’ But Sand – April 21When: April 21, 10 a.m. to Noon Where: Santa Monica Beach, 2600 Barnard Way (at the end of Ocean Park, Tower 27) Volunteer for a beach cleanup! Nothin’ But Sand beach cleanups sponsored by:  |
Santa Monica Pier Aquarium Earth Month Celebration – April 21 & 22When: April 21-22, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. both days Where: Santa Monica Pier Aquarium, 1600 Ocean Front Walk, Santa Monica, CA 90401 Enjoy special Earth Day activities and family fun and free admission to everyone who cleans the beach that weekend. |
Earth Day Cleanup – April 22When: April 22, 9 – 10:45 a.m. Where: Surfrider Beach and Malibu Lagoon, 23050 Pacific Coast Highway, parking lot #23500. Join Heal the Bay and the City of Malibu for a joint beach and kayak cleanup |
WIP FLASH – April 27When: Friday April 27, 6 – 10 p.m. Where: Broadway Art Space 929 Broadway Santa Monica, CA 90402 WIP FLASH is a MOPLA (Month of Photography L.A) event featuring Women In Photography. The WIP FLASH exhibition “First Nature” is in Santa Monica for one night only. The exhibition will start at 6 p.m. for Heal the Bay members with a private, VIP reception. The exhibition will open to the public at 7 p.m. Enjoy complimentary drinks and cocktails. Valet service available. WIP FLASH will donate 20% of photography sales proceeds to benefit Heal the Bay. |
This is the final installment of a four-part series on the many changes the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium has undergone since March 1, 2003, when Heal the Bay took over management and ownership of the marine education center. This blog was authored by Aquarium Director Vicki Wawerchak.
Pollution prevention and environmental stewardship are two messages infused into the programs at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. From learning about storm drains vs. sewers in our field trip education program, to training volunteers to educate the public about our Beach Report Card, the “Pollution Corner” plays an integral role in educating the students and adults about the impacts humans can have – both positively and negatively – on the ocean environment. This exhibit has been transformed into the perfect platform for discussing the latest in plastic bag legislation, but it took awhile for the display to become the popular spot it is today.
The pollution corner, an oddly-shaped area in the far corner of the gallery, has undergone a few variations. When Heal the Bay originally took over the facility it was the UCLA Ocean Discovery Center’s donor wall, which was painted a bright shade of goldenrod. One of the first designs integrated into the corner consisted of an interactive trash timeline, a storm drain versus sewer poster, images of the impacts of pollution on marine life and an eight-foot tall, three-dimensional sculpture of a storm drain with an imbedded video monitor. New teaching elements were introduced along the way including a “butt-o-meter,” a tall acrylic cylinder that was filled to the top with cigarette butts to show just how many were picked up during a beach cleanup, followed by information regarding our partnership with Monterey Bay Aquarium’s seafood watch program.
After many years of trying to figure out what would work well in this challenging space, we enthusiastically settled on the latest rendition. The current pollution corner includes an open ocean exhibit with a sea jelly kreisel (a round tank specially designed to protect the fragile structure of a jelly) filled with majestic moon jellies. Floating inside a tank alongside the kreisel are the remnants of plastic bags and balloons. This exhibit demonstrates the similarities between sea jellies and plastic marine debris in the ocean environment, allowing the visitor to understand how marine life can mistake plastic debris for food, often resulting in death through starvation and choking. A three-dimensional color mural, which also illustrates the negative impact of plastic debris on marine life, is highlighted as well.
I hope you will drop by Heal the Bay’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium and experience everything it now has to offer after years of improvements.
Read part three of our four-part series.
A group of scientists at the Cabrillo Aquarium in San Pedro is analyzing the presence of a tumor on a White Croaker captured in the port of Long Beach. Historically, the existence of tumors in this fish has been associated with contamination from toxic chemicals (DDT and PCBs) that are still present around the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Because DDT and PCBs accumulate in the fatty parts of the fish, we recommend eating only the filet and discarding the head, skin and internal organs to avoid contamination. The health risks are much greater in children and women who are breastfeeding. High exposure to DDT and PCBs can cause cancer, liver damage and adverse effects on the immune and endocrine systems.
In order to keep your family safe and healthy please heed all signs and health advisories found near the many piers and coastal areas of southern California, particularly between the Santa Monica pier and Seal Beach, and avoid eating certain fish that can cause serious health problems such as White Croaker, Barracuda, Black Croaker, Barred Sand Bass and Topsmelt.
From gorgeous coastlines and beautiful birds to underwater sea life and happy kids, photographs from the California Ocean and Coastal Amateur Photography Contest are on exhibit at our Santa Monica Pier Aquarium (SMPA) beginning March 1.
The California Coastal Commission, the Thank You Ocean Campaign, and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts sponsor the annual contest. The photos selected for the exhibit represent winning entries from over the years. Santa Monica’s Mayor Richard Bloom, who is also a Coastal Commissioner, requested the traveling exhibit make a stop in Santa Monica.
“I am excited to present science and art together to educate the general public about how interconnected these two disciplines are,” Aquarium Director Vicki Wawerchak said. “The ability to see what the ocean looks like underwater through this exhibit is a great tool to inspire awareness and conservation of the ocean environment. We are pleased to partner with the California Coastal Commission to bring this opportunity to our Aquarium.”
The SMPA uses space in its Dorothy Green Room to exhibit an array of art installations that connect to the marine environment. Exhibits rotate through every four to eight weeks, offering a variety of artists the opportunity to present selections of marine-related work. The exhibits have highlighted creatures from Alaska to Tahiti, depicted in photographs, pen and inks, digitally created images and watercolors.
The Aquarium is open to the public from 2 to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, and from 12:30 to 5:00 p.m. weekends. The marine science education center is closed Mondays.
To view winners throughout the years, visit the Coastal Commission’s contest home page.
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Ulices Ramirez and Yahaira Arenas, seniors at Santee Education Complex, a high school near downtown Los Angeles, didn’t like the litter they saw in their community, so they decided to document the problem in a short video as a class project.
With help from their English and Government teachers, the duo focused on the economic and visceral impact of illegal dumping and littering in their neighborhoods. They also asked Heal the Bay’s Susie Santilena, an environmental engineer, about the impact of man-made debris on marine life.
“It was my pleasure to work with Ulices and Yahaira,” said Susie. “It’s clear from watching their video that they really got the message. I’m happy that they’re helping to spread the word about the hazards of litter on public health, as well as on the health of our oceans.”
This is the third installment of a four-part series on the many changes the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium has gone through since March 1, 2003, when Heal the Bay took over management and ownership of the marine education center. Today’s blogger, Aquarium Director Vicki Wawerchak, recounts some of the not-so subtle modifications.
The exterior and interior of the facility has undergone a variety of design and color changes in the past nine years. When I first arrived at the Aquarium, it was decked out in traditional UCLA blue and gold. And growing up with a father whose mantra was “Root for UCLA and anyone playing against USC!” – I didn’t mind seeing those colors that had surrounded me for many years.
But after settling in and infusing Heal the Bay’s mission into everything we did, we decided to create an exterior that not only called attention to the facility, but also used that space to educate. We designed a variety of concepts and color schemes for exterior paint, patio banners, sail fin banners and pole flags and decided to use the patio banners to educate the general public about the scale of the marine life in the Santa Monica Bay.
That same father who rooted for UCLA at the 50-yard line was also a teacher who taught me to look for and leverage every teachable moment available—even the ones that didn’t seem obvious at first. So I was excited about the educational banner idea and the staff were eager to debut this new addition. Never did I think it would backfire quite like it did. Many people saw the outline of a juvenile grey whale at 15 feet and a sea lion at six feet and were disappointed to learn that we housed neither of those species in our 4,500-square-foot marine education center—there were even visitors that asked for their $2 entry fee to be refunded. Best laid plans…
The interior of the facility has also been renovated numerous times; the original color scheme of black ceilings, black exhibit bases and grey floors was designed so visitors would feel they were stepping into an underwater world. The feeling of being under the sea was definitely infused into the facility, but again the opportunity to use the interior — not just the exhibits — as a teaching canvas was the driving force for the remodel. We painted the interior, worked to create new colorful exhibit banners, remodeled exhibit bases using recycled materials and installed a new sandy bottom-colored floor.
In December 2008, the installation of a carpet made of recycled material and flooring from recycled tires in our classroom added a new, fresh and clean look for the interior. That year, when we reopened after the holidays with the new design, the general public, teachers and students complimented the interior and a number visitors asked if we had expanded.
While we haven’t expanded our footprint, through creative use of every square inch of the Aquarium, we have managed to expand visitors’ knowledge of the local marine environment.
Read part two of the four part series.
Today’s guest blogger is Kirsten James, Heal the Bay’s water quality director.
Last week I had the unique opportunity to look beyond Santa Monica Bay, California and the nation and learn about water resource issues in Latin America. Focusing outside Heal the Bay’s traditional geographic reach provided great perspective on water quality challenges and solutions around the world.
I was invited to participate in a World Bank workshop held in Washington, D.C., focusing on litter management strategies and their application to integrated urban watershed management and drainage and flood protection investments. The World Bank hoped to draw upon the experiences of NGOs such as Heal the Bay and municipalities in dealing with litter management to inform future projects and investments in Latin America and the Caribbean. Specifically, the Bank wanted to learn from case studies on litter management in Long Beach and Washington, D.C.
During the first session, City of Long Beach Vice-Mayor Suja Lowenthal and I shared litter management strategies that have worked in Los Angeles County’s second-largest city. We shared the successes associated with the trash Total Maximum Daily Load or “TMDL” pollution limits, Low Impact Development (LID) ordinance, the single-use plastic bag ban, and educational programs among other strategies and policies. We then heard from Washington, D.C. staff and a local NGO dealing with similar issues on the opposite coast.
It was comforting to hear that they are using many of the same strategies and having successes (and challenges such as opposition from the plastics industry). The take-away for me was that we need to look beyond California more frequently to exchange lessons-learned on water resources issues.
The next sessions were the most eye-opening. We heard from stakeholders in Barranquilla, Colombia and Buenos Aires, Argentina (via video conference and a translator) on the challenges they are facing with litter management. For these communities, trash abatement is much more than protecting marine life, improving aesthetics at the beach and reducing urban blight. For them it is about public health and safety, first and foremost. For example, the streets in Barranquilla are the drainage system and often act as the city’s trash dump! Before rain, residents often dump trash in these low lying areas so the water will “dispose” of the trash out to sea. The current solid waste collection system is inadequate. During every rain event, the city comes to a stop; all residents must clear the streets and low-lying areas for their own safety. The massive amounts of litter (mostly plastic) exacerbate flooding. Each year there are mortalities due to the extreme flooding.
With the help of World Bank investment, Barranquilla plans to construct an appropriate drainage infrastructure system, and at the same time explore other litter management strategies such as those that were discussed in the context of Long Beach and D.C. The World Bank currently has 28 lending- and grant-based projects in eight countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. This means that the World Bank has many opportunities to share the lessons-learned from the workshop to inform future litter management strategies. It is exciting that Heal the Bay’s local work in California is helping to inform policy in other parts of the world. Although developing nations have many more constraints to deal with than we do in the United States, we can all learn from one another.