Heal the Bay Blog

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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Going into Tuesday’s State Water Board hearing on California’s once-through-cooling policy for power plants, you couldn’t blame me for my usual cynicism about our ability to care for the environment.

After all, the ongoing Gulf spill is causing catastrophic damage to one of America’s most critical estuaries and fisheries. And Gov. Schwarzenegger decided this week that his personal right to light up a stogie in a state park or beach is more critical than stopping marine debris. (Remember – only you can prevent forest fires!)

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The U.S. Attorney’s office has apparently decided to forego prosecution of The Hump for selling endangered Sei whale sashimi to the makers of the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove.” Evidently, the owners’ self-imposed death sentence for the Santa Monica restaurant satisfied the feds.

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I went through my usual morning routine today: sit-ups and stretches during the 6 a.m. edition of “SportsCenter” (great to see real Laker highlights for the first time in a month!); getting a cup of English Breakfast tea and putting the dishes away; confirming the course of the day with family members Lisette, Zack and Jake; and sitting down to the L.A .Times. 

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The California Supreme court gave the Pacific Ocean hope Thursday by agreeing to hear Manhattan Beach’s appeal on its overturned plastic bag ban. Happy Earth Day indeed!!

The news comes during a week when a dead gray whale was found to have ingested about 20 plastic bags in the Puget Sound area. (No message there for Seattle voters that opposed plastic bag fees at the expense of cetaceans and marine debris.)

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