Heal the Bay Blog

The Gulf oil crisis continues to grow with no end in sight. The numbers are staggering:  more than 1,000 dead birds, another 300 or so dead sea turtles, more than 85,000 square miles of Gulf closed to fishing, 150 miles of coast and wetland soiled with oil, 40 million to 80 million gallons of oil wreaking havoc on the Gulf ecosystem and well over $5 billion in liability for BP and the gang. Inexplicably, blame for the ongoing blowout has stuck to President Obama like crude on a pelican’s wings. It isn’t fair, but the consequence is still potentially devastating.

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Put Snoopy On Your License Plate – Support the Aquarium!

The California Association of Museums has embarked on a program to establish a special California Snoopy license plate. Proceeds from sales of the plates will establish a grant program to support California museums, which includes the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. To make this happen, at least 7,500 California drivers need to raise their hands for a Snoopy license plate. So don’t hesitate! Register your interest today, and ask your friends and family to join you in supporting California's museums, science centers, zoos, and aquariums!

The Santa Monica City Council passed a Low Impact Development ordinance on first reading Tuesday night. The measure requires all new development and redevelopment projects to infiltrate or capture and reuse 100% of the runoff generated from a three-quarter-inch storm unless LID measures are infeasible on site. The policy is based on the Ventura County stormwater permit and an earlier draft of the long-stalled LID ordinance by the city of Los Angeles.

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Los Angeles County’s relentless pursuit of saving a buck at the expense of public health was once again rewarded Wednesday morning.

On a technicality, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Yaffe (the same judge who decided that a full blown EIR was needed to ban plastic bags in Manhattan Beach) ruled that the Regional Water Board’s action to put the Santa Monica Beach Bacteria Total Maximum Daily Load into the county stormwater permit was illegal.

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Heal the Bay released its 20^th annual Beach Report Card for California yesterday. Many of the usual suspects populated the Beach Bummer list, with such perennial polluted beaches as Avalon and Cabrillo in the top three.

But the big news of the report card focused on clean beaches during dry weather. Some 76 out of 323 beaches in California received perfect scores during dry weather. That’s right, a full 23% of the state’s beaches monitored year-round never exceeded fecal bacteria water quality and public health standards.

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Heal the Bay celebrated its 25^th anniversary Thursday night with a fundraiser on the beach in Santa Monica.  Sandwiched between freaky winter weather, the gala unfolded on a cloudless, balmy evening that afforded us an extraordinary sunset on the Bay.

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Today marks the one-month anniversary of the Gulf oil spill.  What are you doing to celebrate? On Tuesday, U.S. Sen James Inhofe, the infamous climate change denier, decided to give BP a $9.925 billion dollar gift by opposing the effort to raise the oil spill liability cap to $10 billion. That sure beats a Starbucks gift card. 

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The Washington Post published an eye-opening ad today that implores the public to stop the Obama administration from allowing oil exploration in the Beaufort and Chuchki Seas.  Environmental groups including the Sierra Club, NRDC, NWF, Oceana, WWF and Pew paid for the ad.

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I’ve held back on providing commentary on the Gulf oil spill. After all, the story has led the news for two and half weeks and every newspaper seems to have an Op-Ed on the topic every other day. Besides, I didn’t want to write a raving anger piece laced with numerous F-bombs and other expletives.

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Warning!  Sometimes I’m prone to write in nerd-speak about the confusing labyrinth of water quality regulations that weaken water quality protection. With apologies to the reader, this is one of those times.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Board approved Thursday yet another Water Effects Ratio (WER) for a polluted water body. A WER is a pseudo-scientific modeling exercise to determine how much of a pollutant is bioavailable to kill or poison aquatic life.

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