Heal the Bay Blog

I spent last week at the EPA’s National Beach Conference in Miami, where I gave a couple of presentations, learned about the latest in beach water quality research, and heard from EPA on the upcoming criteria for measuring water quality.

EPA’s criteria haven’t been updated since 1986, and the new rules are required to be completed by the end of 2012 under a Consent Decree with the NRDC.  With the recent completion of a comprehensive research plan, EPA staff members have all the information they’ll use to develop the new criteria.

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Yesterday, the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium, the west end of the Santa Monica Pier and surrounding beach lots were closed due to the Tsunami Advisory (canceled at 8:20am today) issued for the Southern California coast due to the 8.9 earthquake in Japan.

Tsunami Advisory Info

• A Tsunami Advisory was in effect for the coastal areas of California from the California-Mexico border to Point Concepcion, California.
• A Tsunami Advisory means that a tsunami capable of
  producing strong currents or waves dangerous to persons in or very near
  the water is expected.
• Significant, widespread inundation
  is not expected for areas
  under an advisory. Currents may be hazardous to swimmers, boats,
  and coastal structures and may continue for several hours after the
  initial wave arrival.

Japan Earthquake Info

• At 9:46 PM Pacific Standard Time on March 10, an earthquake with
  preliminary magnitude 8.9 occurred near the east coast of Honshu, Japan. (Refer to the United States Geological Survey for official earthquake parameters.)
• This earthquake has generated a tsunami which could
  cause damage to coastal regions in a warning or advisory.
  Estimated tsunami arrival times and maps along with safety rules and other information can be found on the WCATWC web site.

The Aquarium staff  worked closely with Santa Monica Harbor Patrol to monitor the situation and get up to date guidance and information.

As such the following changes were made to yeasterday’s Aquarium schedule:

• Public hours: 12noon – 5pm today (Friday, May 11)
• Two field trips that were scheduled for Friday were cancelled.

Note: regular Aquarium public hours resume today, Saturday, May 12.

Other tsunami-related updates during Friday, May 10, for Santa Monica:

• Updated 12noon: Beach parking lots were reopened.
• Updated at 4pm: While swimmers are being warned about potential
  strong currents, the police are no longer cautioning people to stay away
  from the beach or the pier.
• Updated at 4pm: The Santa Monica Pier reopened
  Friday afternoon, with pedestrians and cars streaming down the bridge.
  The tsunami advisory is still in effect in Santa Monica, according to
  NOAA.
• Follow general observances and updates at Santa Monica Patch.

As the father of an 11-year-old daughter, I end up going to a lot of movies that would never make my must-see list.  This weekend, I was one of the many parents that took in “Rango.” I actually enjoyed the film, and I couldn’t help but be struck by the similarities between my life and this latest animated feature from Nickelodeon.  As life goes on, the parallels between art and life are easier to find, but “Rango” hit pretty close to the mark.

Over 25 years ago, as a master’s student at UCLA, my field work focused on the behavioral ecology of lizards.  I know… kind of a shock for a water guy. The field site for my research on lizard escape behavior (a major theme of the film) was in beautiful Desert Center — a remote outpost off Interstate 10, halfway between Indio and Blythe. The connections between Desert Center and the fictional town of Dirt in the movie are eerie.

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There was an oil spill Tuesday morning just north of Faria Beach in Ventura County. Officials responded to a camper who saw hundreds of gallons of oil seeping onto the beach. At this time, the source of the oil is still unknown although it is believed to be coming from the oil fields nearby. 

More information.

Photo: lsgcp via Flickr

Enough is enough.  Although Heal the Bay generally only uses litigation as a last resort, we do have our limits.  On Tuesday, Santa Barbara environmental group Heal the Oceans and Heal the Bay filed a lawsuit against the State Water Resources Control Board for its failure to implement Assembly Bill 885, which required the Board to develop regulations for on-site wastewater treatment systems. AB 885 was authored by former assembly member Hannah-Beth Jackson in 1999 and Gov. Davis signed it into law in 2000. The bill required the Board to develop regulations for the siting, permitting and operation of on-site wastewater treatment systems, or OWTS, by 2004.

The regulations took aim at septic systems, which pose a serious threat to water quality at several famous beaches up and down the coast.  After seven years of patience and a decade of regulatory negotiations with the state, county health agencies, OWTS experts and local government representatives, the environmental groups involved felt that they had no choice but to sue the state to ensure that the law would be implemented. Coast Law Group filed the suit on behalf of the organizations.

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About 15 years ago, I was invited to an advisory board meeting of a start-up pollution cleanup company called AbTech Industries. I didn’t go for the free trip to Santa Barbara, nor as an escape from my toddler sons for a desperately needed good night’s sleep. No, what drew me was a chance to meet famed ocean scientist Sylvia Earle.

When I walked into the advisory board meeting, the extraordinary petroleum-related experience of all of the Ph.Ds in the room awed me. That day I met many of the professors that would later be quoted so prominently after the Deepwater Horizon spill. Barely 10 years into the field by then, I was invited to talk about the stormwater regulatory arena and the potential needs under the Clean Water Act for pollution cleanup technologies. That’s where I met John Robinson.
 
John didn’t make a very good first impression on me. An obsessive smoker, he offered biting opinions on a wide variety of topics and people. He also seemed to downplay the potential environmental impacts of everyday operations in the petroleum industry. I didn’t understand until years later why he understated those impacts. Day-to-day operations paled to the environmental horrors he witnessed firsthand at the Amoco Cadiz spill in France, at Valdez and in the Persian Gulf.

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