Heal the Bay Blog

It isn’t perfect, but the Legislature’s new Water Bond could help improve local water reliability, says Kirsten James, Heal the Bay’s Science and Policy Director for Water Quality.

Aug. 14, 2014 — Last night, in a nearly unanimous vote, the California Legislature approved a new $7.54 billion Water Bond after many months of tense negotiations. The Water Quality, Supply, Infrastructure and Improvement Act of 2014 replaces a bloated $11.1 billion bond that was a leftover from the Gov. Schwarzenegger era. If approved by voters in November, investments will be made in local water supply projects and watershed restoration — initiatives that can directly benefit our drought-stricken state and Santa Monica Bay.

Throughout the negotiations, Heal the Bay advocated for significant dollars to go towards projects promoting regional self-reliance for water supply, thereby improving water quality in our Bay and beyond. We partnered with other NGOs and dozens of local cities to bolster this message in frequent trips to Sacramento. As a result, the bond includes $1.535 billion for water recycling, stormwater capture, water efficiency and other local water projects. 

For instance, investments would be made in expanding multi-benefit projects that capture and infiltrate stormwater for use in recharging groundwater supplies to replenish our overdrafted aquifer and cleaning up existing groundwater supplies. This makes sense: We should be capturing and reusing stormwater instead of funneling polluted runoff directly into the Bay.

Urbanized areas of California have the potential to harness nearly half-a-million acre-feet of water via stormwater capture each year, according to a recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pacific Institute. That’s enough to meet all the water needs of 1 million families for an entire year.

There are many positive elements of the Water Bond. But when passage requires a two-thirds vote in the Legislature, compromises have to be made. A disproportionate amount of funding ($2.7 billion) is allocated for storage projects, which can have major environmental impacts and do not promote the practice of finding “new” local water sources. We are also disappointed to see desalination projects eligible for funding in the money dedicated to drought preparedness and water recycling, without criteria for prioritizing other, more sustainable local water projects.    

Our region (and state) is in desperate need of funds for water quality and local water supply projects. Although this Water Bond isn’t the “silver bullet” solution, many of these investments will help improve both our local water reliability and our response to the drought.

More will have to be done to get us all the way there, but this is an important start.

(Click here for a larger version. Infographic courtesy of NRDC and the Pacific Institute)

9/30/2014 Update: Governor Brown has signed the California Senate approved SB 270, the bill to ban single-use plastic bags across the state, into law. California is the first state to have a state-wide law banning such bags. “We’re the first to ban these bags, and we won’t be the last,” wrote Brown. 

WE DID IT!

Heal the Bay bagged a huge win late Friday night when the California Senate approved SB 270 — a ban on the distribution of single-use plastic shopping bags at major retailers throughout the state. Now we’re just waiting for the bill to make its way to Governor Brown’s desk for ratification. This would make us the first state in the nation to impose a statewide bag ban! Our office is celebrating this Labor Day weekend because we’ve been working hard on this issue for seven long years!

With 13 billion bags handed out each year in California, these “urban” tumbleweeds create mountains of waste, choke our waterways, and cost taxpayers millions of dollars to clean up.

To combat this madness, our science-and-policy team played the lead role in drafting and enacting bag bans in the city and county of Los Angeles. These earlier ordinances served as a model for the statewide bill and created momentum for its passage today. Our science and policy directors Kirsten James and Sarah Sikich also can take some satisfaction that those dozens of pre-dawn flights to Sacramento to work on behalf of the statewide ban have finally paid off.

Heal the Bay and our partners had to battle intense lobbying efforts from Big Plastic. We didn’t have as much money, but we prevailed thanks to your support.

Plastic bags serve as a “gateway” issue for us, getting people to think more sustainably in other areas of their life, whether it’s skipping plastic water bottles or refusing drinking straws. 

Following this victory, Heal the Bay will pivot to a comprehensive statewide solution for trash control – a strong statewide trash policy that would compel all municipalities to meet strict numeric reductions in the amount of trash they send to our local rivers and ocean waterways.

This work is critical for a healthy L.A., but it isn’t sexy. And it’s not easy. It takes months of policy review, nuanced negotiation and constant vigilance. It also takes the political and financial support of ocean lovers like you.

If this work is important to you, please consider becoming a member of Heal the Bay today, or making a small donation to support our plastic pollution efforts.

Got bag ban concerns? Let us hopefully put some of them to rest with this myths-and-facts rundown.

                             Heal the Bay led the charge to enact a ban in  L.A., spurring statewide action

Poor Bag Monster. Where will he pollute next?

Our friends at Upwell have created this handy-dandy TV guide for Shark Week programs. We encourage you to binge on as much toothy TV as you can stomach this week — while being mindful that some shows are purely sensational. Let us know what you think: Leave comments about what you watched on our Facebook page!

When your eyes are too glazed over to take any more, head down to our Santa Monica Pier Aquarium next Sunday for some in-the-flesh shark-tivities!

Heal the Bay is grateful!

We’d like to thank Xceed Financial for encouraging those who join their credit union family to also become Heal the Bay members. One of the requirements to join this financial institution is to be a member of one of a select list of nonprofit organizations, including Heal the Bay. New customers of Xceed have donated many thousands of dollars toward clean waters in 2014.

And a shout-out to Michael Ernstoff, who donated his recent windfall to Heal the Bay on behalf of windsurfers who appreciate our efforts toward a clean and healthy ocean. A film studio paid Ernstoff for the use of his property for their next movie, Ernstoff explained. “(The money) is being passed on to Heal the Bay on behalf of the many windsurfers, like myself, that are thankful for Heal the Bay’s efforts to clean up coastal waters,“ he said.

 “Changing people’s lives, one bathroom at a time,” is One Week Bath’s motto, but in the case of their marathon week at our Santa Monica Pier Aquarium, the Van Nuys company is making three times the difference – and still all in one week! Matt Plaskoff – who’s been surfing the Santa Monica breaks his whole life  – wanted his 2,000th bathroom remodel to be a free remodel and a special commemorative project that would have a big impact.

“I grew up in the area, went to Santa Monica High School, Santa Monica College, raised my kids on the Bay, and I surf – the health of the Santa Monica Bay is something I am very passionate about,” said Plaskoff. “Knowing that these bathrooms are going to serve millions of kids that come to the Aquarium to learn about marine biology makes this one of the most meaningful projects in my career.”

The Aquarium staff is ecstatic to have two gorgeous new bathrooms for its visitors – and a remodeled staff bathroom as well.  Thanks to One Week Bath, its workers who donated time after hours to complete construction without disrupting Aquarium operations, and to the following companies that donated the materials for the project: Daltile, Ferguson, Kohler, BY Marble, Wellborn, Dunn Edwards and Home Depot.

Since the 2012 release of the Environmental Protection Agency’s controversial Recreational Beach Water Quality Criteria, Heal the Bay, the NRDC and a coalition of environmental groups have been working with the EPA on aspects of implementation. While we had significant reservations about  the lowered standards for allowable beach pollution, our policy team has been offering input on how to strengthen overall public health protection and notification measures.

The 2012 criteria recommend the use of more protective standards for determining when to notify the public about health risks at chronically polluted beaches. The EPA may have developed these so-called Beach Action Values, or BAVs, but the government agency did not require their use.

Well, after months of lobbying, we received a bit of good news this week.

The EPA’s new Beach Guidance Document makes a better effort to incentivize the use of BAVs. To access federal funds for regular beach monitoring, states will have to employ more protective BAVs when making decisions to post beaches or even close them temporarily because of bacterial pollution.

This is a big win for public health protection. The document does include a high-bar exception for states that can scientifically justify use of a different threshold. We hope that California and other coastal states will recognize that the more protective BAV value is the only justifiable approach for adequate public health protection.

While EPA’s action is a big win in protecting the future health of beach-goers, more federal support is needed to broaden the scope of the BEACH Act. The act mandates regular monitoring of all coastal beaches in the U.S. for levels of bacterial pollution. With more than 180 million visits each year to American beaches, it’s simply time to invest in more protective and consistent monitoring. A day at the beach should never make anyone sick.

Heal the Bay has been leading the fight to stop a scary proposal to open up the Bay to oil drilling in Hermosa Beach. You may recall that energy company E&B Natural Resources wants to erect an 87-foot drilling rig and up to 34 wells on a 1.3-acre plot six blocks from the beach. They want to extract up to 8,000 barrels of oil a day from underneath the seafloor. To do it, the company has to convince local voters to repeal an existing drilling moratorium in the city. We think it’s a terrible idea.

Well, after months of wrangling, the Hermosa Beach City Council has set a special-election date to decide the issue: March 3, 2015.

Shortly before 3 a.m., after hours of discussion, public input, and negotiation, the council elected to move forward with the ballot measure.  Originally, the council and community had been striving for a November 2014 election. But, E&B has continually maintained it has the right to set the election date based on a previous legal settlement with the city, and the oil company would not agree to November. Due to concerns about additional litigation, the council elected for a March date as a better alternative, which E&B’s president endorsed.

The final Environmental Impact Report for the proposed slant-drilling project accompanying the ballot initiative received City Council approval earlier this month. It identifies nine significant and unavoidable impacts: aesthetics, air quality, biology, hydrology, land use, noise, recreation, safety, and risk of upset (e.g. spills and explosions).

Additional studies, including the Health Impact Assessment and Cost Benefit Analysis, are expected to be finalized over the next month.

Heal the Bay will continue to oppose lifting the ban on oil drilling in Hermosa Beach, along with the E&B project. It’s an ill-conceived proposal that poses numerous ecological and economic threats to our coastline. Despite the allure of royalties to local residents, it’s simply not worth the risk.

We are pleased that the city and E&B collectively chose a date that diminishes the threat of additional litigation. We will continue to follow this issue closely and work with our community partners ahead of the election to educate voters and keep oil drilling out of our Bay.

What can you do to prevent oil drilling from taking place in Santa Monica Bay? Want to learn more? Check out our Take Action page.