Heal the Bay Blog

CEO Ruskin Hartley gets up close with the wonders of the Bay.

For the last eight weeks or so I have largely been looking at Santa Monica Bay from the shore. Since moving to Los Angeles, I’ve enjoyed playing in the waves and swimming along the shoreline, but today was my first chance to get further out into the Bay. I joined our Santa Monica Pier Aquarium team on one of its weekly collecting expeditions, which harvest kelp to feed the animals in the aquarium. As our aquarist, Jose, says, it’s the weekly trip to the farmers market.

The Bay, and indeed the oceans, give us so much. After all they cover 71% of the planet and provide everything from the oxygen we breathe, to the fish we eat, to the natural substances that thicken Jell-O. The list goes on. But a few hours on the water off Palos Verdes gave me something distinct – a profound sense of the wonder of the ocean.

It really is a different world out there. The solid earth is replaced by the ever-shifting, fluid ocean. Wave upon wave. Powerful forces gently lifting our 14-foot dinghy up and down as we leaned over the side, straining for the kelp. The constantly changing play of light and shade on the water as the clouds and sun slid overhead.

Where we first encountered the kelp, the long tendrils reached for the light, laying down when they reached the surface. This caused the ripples to flatten out, leaving a glassy surface. The seals, sea birds, and even the odd kelp crab seemed quite at home out there. I was a grateful visitor.

Bobbing around on the surface of the vast ocean gave me the same sense of walking amid the redwood giants. A sense of being a tiny part of the wonderful world.

            Santa Monica Pier Aquarium aquarist Jose Bacallao shows Ruskin the ropes off Palos Verdes.

Heal the Bay chief Ruskin Hartley says sewage isn’t sexy, but it’s fascinating:

I recently had the chance to tour the Hyperion treatment plant with a group of staff and volunteers from Heal the Bay. Many thanks to our friends at the Bureau of Sanitation for organizing an instructive tour. Here’ some of what I learned:

1. Hyperion was one of the 12 Greek Titans and the father of the god Helius. Hyperion is also the name of a sewage treatment plant in L.A. It’s also the name of the world’s tallest tree — a 379-foot coast redwood in Redwood National Park.

2. Hyperion is the largest sewage plant, by volume, west of the Mississippi. It treats 300 million gallons a day (MGD) on a regular basis and can handle 900 MGD flat out. By comparison, you’d only need 100 MGD to fill the Rose Bowl. Or 90,000 fans. Take your pick.

3. You may have heard of effluent. It’s the treated wastewater discharged into a bay or ocean. But did you know that influent is the name for what they call the raw sewage that flows in the front door of the plant. I didn’t.

4. The city of L.A. purchased the land that Hyperion stands on in 1892 and built the first modern plant in 1949. Up until that time, raw sewage was discharged to the Bay. But I use the word modern loosely. From 1949-98, the plant blended treated and untreated effluent and then pumped it into the Bay. The result? Sick surfers, dead fish, and dolphins with skin lesions. Oh, and a fight with Heal the Bay.

5. Heal the Bay was founded in 1985 to get Hyperion to clean up its act. By 1987 officials had agreed to fix the problem. But it took 12 years and $1.6 billion to get to a place where only treated effluent was pumped into the Bay. Now surfers are healthier, dolphins are happier, and the fish die of natural causes. Unless it’s raining. But urban runoff is another story and a much more challenging problem we work on day in day out.

6. Despite the fact the new plant has allowed the Bay to recover, the treated effluent itself is not safe for humans. Seagulls may swim in the treated water ponds, but if you or I did the same we would get sick. So the last piece of the treatment puzzle is the dilution provided by the Santa Monica Bay. It does it tirelessly and doesn’t get paid.

7. It can take several days for influent to get from your toilet to Hyperion. But once there, the liquid is processed within a day. The solids take longer to be digested by beneficial bacteria and converted to compost that is used in Kern County farms and Griffith Park.

8. Some 6,700 miles of sewage line feed into Hyperion. That’s like L.A. to N.Y. and back.

9. About 80% of the power needs for Hyperion are met from methane gas generated on-site from all that poop.

Heal the Bay staff is all smiles after a tour of the Hyperion plant, the historic Ground Zero for the group.

Ben Kay, a marine biology teacher at Santa Monica High School and longtime partner of Heal the Bay in the fight against plastic pollution, took a midnight run to Santa Monica’s Pico Kenter stormdrain this morning. Here’s his alarming report about the effect the season’s “Second Flush” had on our local shoreline:

Sorry, had to share another shocking video from my midnight run today: copious plastic pollution and mystery foam strike again. With much more rain, the second flush of the stormdrains this early morning turned out to be much worse than the first flush back on Oct. 9., spraying debris all along the beach. The sad thing is that this is totally preventable, yet my students and I have documented the same phenomenon six years in a row.

Unmistakable negative human impacts to oceanic and land habitats stem from our increasing reliance on disposable plastic goods. Each flush of Santa Monica’s Pico Kenter Storm Drain exacerbates the problem. Even in our affluent, progressive, and green-minded community of Santa Monica, a thick stream of plastic pollutants flows unfiltered into the sea, and nothing meaningful has been done to systematically combat this crisis in my eight years of examining the issue with students.

We clearly have both a litter problem and a plastic packaging problem, not just the former. Real solutions include:

• Mandatory environmental education in all schools at all grade levels
• Banning and refusing to use single-use plastic bags, utensils, straws, water/juice/soda bottles, and polystyrene food packaging
• Choosing reusable products
• Listening to sound science on environmental issues, not what the plastic industry tells us

If this report bothers you, consider joining our emergency Storm Response Team, a hardy group of volunteers that removes debris from our most impacted beaches following heavy rainfall.

For six years, Heal the Bay has organized “A Day Without a Bag” to kick off the holiday season, encouraging people to skip single-use plastic. But this year we proudly celebrated “A Day With a Bag” – a reusable one – to commemorate the City of Los Angeles’ plastic bag ban, which goes into effect Jan. 1. Heal the Bay helped organize the distribution of 8,000 free reusable bags to residents in all corners of L.A. and every council district.

The mobilization wouldn’t have been possible without the assistance of the following groups: The Children’s Nature Institute, Tree People, One Generation, Temple Judea, PAVA, Sun Valley High School, Pacoima Beautiful, St. Raphaels, Augustus Hawkins Nature Park, Challengers Boys and Girls Club, EsoWon Books, Palisades Cares, Boys & Girls Clubs of Venice, CSUN service learning students, Echo Park TAP, LA Beautification Team, Urban Semillas, Punk Rock Marthas, Cathy Beauregard and a group of UCLA students. More information about all of these terrific partners can be found through our distribution site map.

Inland cleanups help beautify a community and educate about the connection between urban areas to the east and the Santa Monica Bay. We also salute JingTian Ye, president and founder of the Bottles for the Bay Foundation in Rowland Heights, who understands that connection and generously purchased three cases of heavy-duty bags for use at our inland cleanups.

Heal the Bay CEO Ruskin Hartley pays a visit to one of Heal the Bay’s greatest triumphs — Ahmanson Ranch, the largest parkland acquisition in the history of the Los Angeles-Ventura County region.

The early 2000s were heady days for land conservation. Flush with funds from voter-approved bond funds, the state competed for and secured protection for some remarkable pieces of property. At the time I was working in Northern California safeguarding redwoods. Save the Redwoods League had just protected the 25,000-acre Mill Creek property at a cost of $60 million. It seemed like a lot of money at the time, but I remember hearing of two transactions in Southern California that together cost the better part of $300 million. Wow, I thought. How could anything be worth that much?

Well, this past Saturday I finally stepped foot on one of these tracts of land: the former Ahmanson Ranch (now the “Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve,” a natty name I know). In 1998, Washington Mutual acquired the Ahmanson Ranch Co. and set about developing a self-contained city (complete with two PGA golf courses) located in the rapidly urbanizing San Fernando Valley. The proposal set off a firestorm of local opposition. Locals hated the thought of all the additional traffic, and the loss of local open space that was valued by both them and the critters that called the 3,000-acre ranch home.

A textbook campaign ensued that ultimately led to the ranches protection as parkland for all to enjoy. But before it could succeed, it had to go beyond a local issue to an issue of regional and state-wide importance. And that’s where Heal the Bay came in.

Ahmanson marked the first time that Heal the Bay had played a leading role in opposing a private development, one located many miles from the coast to boot. The nexus was water quality in Santa Monica Bay and the impact that unchecked development would have on the headwaters of Malibu Creek. Heal the Bay scientists mapped red legged frog habitat, assessed downstream water quality, and mobilized regional and statewide support for what until that time had been a local issue. Ultimately the stars came into alignment and the recent passage of voter-approved park and water bonds provided the funding to halt the development and create public park land.

California Governor Gray Davis, state legislator Fran Pavley, and director-activist Rob Reiner announced the deal back in 2003. This weekend they reunited to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the acquisition.

Yes, $150 million was a lot at the time. But it truly was an investment in the future. Not only does Ahmanson Ranch protect water quality each and every day, it also provides a much needed green sanctuary in the heart of suburbia for the residents of the Valley and beyond.

It’s safe to say, that without the dogged and persistent engagement of Heal the Bay to transform a local issue to a statewide campaign, the land today would be just another subdivision and place to play golf (two rounds). And as we know, subdivisions and golf courses don’t help water quality. Quite the reverse. Society as a whole ends up paying the costs to clean up the runoff they create.

I no longer look at the $150 million as an expenditure. It really was an investment in protecting open space that has a direct return in terms of enhanced property values, forgone costs of water pollution clean-up, and the intangible values of providing people open space to recreate in. Thank you Heal the Bay!

P.S. I just read about the latest Lear Jet. For its $600 million-plus price tag you could buy four ranches (at 2003 prices). That said, you and three friends could get anywhere in the world quickly and comfortably. I will let you decide which is the better long-term investment.

Visitors enjoying the open space afforded by the Ahmanson Ranch purchase in 2003.