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.
About UsBeach Report CardLong Beach / AvalonMalibu / Pacific PalisadesMarina del Rey / Playa del ReyPalos Verdes PeninsulaSanta MonicaSouth BayVenice Beach
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.
Who wouldn’t want a job that involves strolling along some of the most beautiful beaches in L.A.? It’s not a paid gig, but you get to help protect what you love – the ocean! Heal the Bay is now training volunteers to help monitor our new marine protected areas (MPAs) in Point Dume and Palos Verdes. Volunteers collect observational data on coastal uses in MPAs; data which is then used by the California Department of Fish & Game to help with management and compliance.
“Our volunteer citizen scientists come from varied backgrounds – from social workers to students – but all our volunteers have one thing in common: a passion for the sea,” says Dana Roeber Murray, Heal the Bay’s coastal scientist. Dana started the MPA Watch program in early 2011 to train local citizens on MPA monitoring and has trained over 60 volunteers to date.
“It took years of collaboration with scientists, fishermen, government, and other non-profits to see these protected areas enacted,” Dana says. “We worked hard up and down the state to make it happen. So it’s been very gratifying to see the public embracing MPAs and volunteering their time to help monitor their effectiveness.”
MPA Watch volunteers commit to attending one classroom and one field training to become citizen scientists, then go on to survey the coast at least four times a month. Heal the Bay also offers MPA Watch summer internship opportunities for people eager to get more deeply involved with Heal the Bay’s Science and Policy department. For more information, check out our MPA Watch FAQs or contact Dana.
Trainings are only offered a few times a year, so reserve your spot and sign up now.
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. |
Long Beach / AvalonMalibu / Pacific PalisadesMarina del Rey / Playa del ReyPalos Verdes PeninsulaSanta MonicaSouth BayVenice Beach
Guinness, corned beef and…clean oceans? With St. Patrick’s Day just around the corner, Heal the Bay offers some useful tips on how to have fun while also protecting our beaches and watersheds. Think six-pack rings and trips to the loo…
Use a Designated Driver When you carpool or take public transit to your local pub, you reduce harmful emissions that foul our oceans. If you’ve been imbibing, you also keep the roads safer.
Beware of Six-pack Rings Guinness may not use them, but plastic rings from other brewers can entangle and trap marine animals after they get in the waste stream. Cut them up before you throw them out.
Keep Your Trash to Yourself If you’re out on a night on the town, reduce your impact. Keep trash off the street and out of storm drains – lest all that parade and party debris end up in the ocean. Cigarette butts remain the No. 1 item that volunteers find at beach cleanups.
Sack the Plastic Bag Loading up on corned beef, cabbage and potatoes? Bring your own reusable shopping bag to grocery store. Plastic bags create loads of unnecessary litter and choke our waterways. (Ireland, by the way, has decreased plastic bag use by 94% since introducing a levy on plastic bags in 2002.)
Hold Onto Your Balloons All those helium-filled shamrock-shaped balloons may be cute, but they can blow away to the sea and harm animals. Always pop balloons and put them in the trash.
Don’t Be a Drip Too much green beer means more trips to the loo. Use water wisely by turning off the faucet when you don’t need it and installing low-flow toilets. Conserving water helps sewage treatments plants do a better job.
Give Back If you’ve overindulged, you can pay some penance the “morning after” by getting involved with Heal the Bay. Volunteer for a future beach cleanup, adopt an animal at the Santa Monica Bay Aquarium or download our Beach Report Card mobile device app.
Heal the Bay staff has been fielding questions lately from people who are concerned about debris from last year’s devastating tsunami in Japan. Will it wash ashore here? Is it radioactive? The bottom line is that scientists believe that most of the debris from the tsunami has already sunk in the Pacific. What disaster-related debris may wash ashore in Southern California in the coming months and years will be widely dispersed. Most important, it’s unlikely to contain radiation.
Because of the high level of marine debris already in the ocean, it’s nearly impossible to determine if a particular item found on the beach did indeed come from the disaster zone in Japan. If you do discover something unusual on the shoreline, we encourage you to take a picture of it and contact us. If it looks potentially dangerous, please don’t pick it up.
We’ve assembled an FAQ with more information. The one-year anniversary of the tsunami has generated a lot of media buzz, but remember that marine debris is a 365-day-a-year problem. If you want to help please volunteer for one of our regular cleanups.
Heal the Bay staff has been fielding questions lately from people who are concerned about debris from last year’s devastating tsunami in Japan. Will it was ashore here? Is it radioactive? The bottom line is that scientists believe that most of the debris from the tsunami has already sunk in the Pacific. What disaster-related debris may wash ashore in Southern California in the coming months and years will be widely dispersed. Most important, it’s unlikely to contain radiation.
Because of the high level of marine debris already in the ocean, it’s nearly impossible to determine if a particular item found on the beach did indeed come from the disaster zone in Japan. If you do find something unusual on the shoreline, we encourage you to take a picture of it and contact us. If it looks potentially dangerous, please don’t pick it up.
We’ve assembled an FAQ with more information. And remember that marine debris is a 365-day-a-year problem. If you want to help. please volunteer for one of our regular cleanups.
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 proposal to more than double wastewater fees in Redondo Beach over the next three years has been approved by the City Council despite a mild protest.
Kudos to the city for taking the right steps to ensure that South Bay beaches remain safe and healthy for people and marine life.
As Councilmember Matt Kilroy said: “We have a tremendous responsibility to keep our water clean.”
Today’s blogger is Kirsten James, Heal the Bay’s director of water quality.
There’s a new ray of hope in Heal the Bay’s ongoing campaign to have the EPA strengthen new recreational water quality criteria. Last week in Washington, D.C, I had a good meeting with the EPA’s Acting Assistant Administrator for Water, Nancy Stoner, and her team working on the criteria development. I presented our concerns about the revised criteria and offered specific data analyses to demonstrate the potential negative impact on public health if they are adopted as written.
All too often government agencies see the public input process as simply “checking the box.” But I left the meeting feeling optimistic that EPA staff heard and understood our concerns and was willing to consider changes to the criteria. Later that day, Heal the Bay and the Natural Resources Defense Council submitted comments that detailed our concerns. Dozens of other environmental groups from around the nation also provided comments with similar concerns.
The national recreational water quality criteria are important because local officials use them to determine when a beach should be posted for public health warnings. In addition, regulators use them to ensure dischargers are on task to clean up polluted beaches. The current guidelines were developed in 1986, and there have been many scientific studies since that time to better inform new criteria and implementation recommendations.
Unfortunately, EPA’s newly proposed criteria are actually less protective than the existing rules. They fail to use the latest and best science, including epidemiology studies from Southern California, Florida, and in Europe, to determine an appropriate risk association between fecal indicator bacteria and a beachgoer’s health.
Heal the Bay has many serious concerns with EPA’s draft. Officials propose an allowable health risk of 1 in 28. In other words, under the new guidelines it would be permissible for one student in a 28-person class to come down with a case of flu, diarrhea or other illness after visiting the beach during a field trip. This doesn’t come close to meeting the “laugh test” for protecting public health. In addition, EPA’s proposal also allows water testing to be averaged over a period as long as 90 days and for one in every four samples to exceed safe levels before pollution reduction is required. These statistical details may appear insignificant on their face, but actually have major implications for your family’s health at the beach.
EPA has the opportunity (and frankly, a legal mandate) to upgrade its recreational water quality criteria to better protect the public from the dangers of polluted water at U.S. beaches. We remain hopeful that officials will work with stakeholders to meet this critical goal.
Your voice can help make sure America’s beaches are safe for all beachgoers, especially children. Act now and tell the EPA to protect you and your family at the beach.
Our coastline is shrinking, but what can Los Angeles do about it?
Knowledge is power. Attend the discussion panel of the year at Hermosa Beach Community Center, “Rising Tides: Exploring LA’s Readiness for Sea Level Rise,” to find out.