Santa Monica Bay Blues

A conversation with marine biologist Rimmon C. Fay, 57, owner of a marine specimen supply firm, an ex-member of the state Coastal Commission and a leader in the fight against pollution in Santa Monica Bay. Los Angeles officials have agreed to spend $2.3 billion to improve treatment of toxin-laden sewage the city dumps in the bay, which is being considered for the federal Superfund cleanup list.

Q: You were one of the first marine biologists to explore the waters of Santa Monica Bay. What was the bay like before pollution took hold? A: I grew up here on this bay and learned to swim in it at the age of 5. My recollections as a child were (of) clear water, blue water. I can remember the kids a few years older than I diving for coins off the Venice pier. The water was clear enough that they could see the coins we would throw into the water. There were kelp beds--tremendous kelp beds--all through Santa Monica Bay. And growth on things like pier pilings--the mussels were nearly a foot thick or maybe greater. And, of course, the birds, pelicans especially, thousands resting on the piers and the breakwaters. It was clear and clean and abounding in life. And then there was an abrupt change: The appearance of the chlorinated hydrocarbons--DDT and the PCBs. The appearance of heavy metals in the late 1940s, early 1950s. And, of course, what happened was that things failed to reproduce. It was an across-the-board failure in reproduction--everything from algae on through all the invertebrates and fish and into the birds and marine mammals. Q: Your first big victory in the fight to protect the bay was in 1970. How did that come about? A: It was quite curious. For years I was bitterly and openly frustrated by the state Department of Fish and Game, which had not aggressively pursued water-pollution problems here. Although some members of the department were hostile toward me for my outspoken disappointment in them, other members of the department provided me with information that they dared not make public themselves. A portion of this information indicated that DDT concentrations in the fish in Santa Monica Bay were the highest ever determined in any fish anywhere in the world. And I didn’t know what to do about it. Here I am, an independent fisherman, and I’ve got this truly explosive piece of information.

I happened to be talking to a client of mine, and he said, “Why don’t you call the Environmental Defense Fund? They just got DDT outlawed in Wisconsin.” EDF put me in contact with Los Angeles attorney Norman Rudman, who at EDF’s request filed suit (an injunction). And within two weeks we had a stipulated agreement that Montrose Chemical (the company ultimately blamed for dumping the lion’s share of DDT--hundreds of tons--into county sewers) would stop discharging the DDT into the ocean.

Because it went on for more than 20 years, it’s been described as the worst documented case of marine pollution that’s occurred anywhere in the world. And we’re still seeing the effects of that. Q: But only in the past few months have L.A. city officials acknowledged that the bay is polluted. Why did it take so long? A: (Laughs.) You ask me that as a reporter for a newspaper that has profited enormously from land development, from a real estate section, from all of the tremendous activity here that’s resulted in this becoming the most intensively developed desert in the world.

Look at what’s happening to Southern California. Los Angeles County is the major manufacturing county in the nation. It is probably the most populous county in the nation. And all of this development has occurred with virtually a minimum of planning and thought about the environmental consequences--air quality, transportation, water quality. And the thing that’s driven politics in this area has been land development, development of the ports, development of commerce--not protection of our fisheries. When we’d appear before the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, trying to call its attention to the pollution events that were occurring out here, our major adversaries were the California Manufacturers Assn. and the (Los Angeles Area) Chamber of Commerce. Q: Many environmentalists say that despite the publicity over pollution in the bay, the City of Los Angeles still is not doing enough. How much commitment do you expect from the City Council in cleaning the bay? A: Throughout the history of the L.A. City Council, we’ve never had a council person from a coastal district who has articulated or been active in abating our water-pollution problems. The council person from San Pedro--currently it’s Joan Milke Flores--has always had to deal with the commercial fishing industry there, and the commercial fishing industry has always wanted to dump its waste into San Pedro Bay. (Councilwoman) Pat Russell has the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant in her district and has never come to grips with the problems there, and (Councilman) Marvin Braude actually authored arguments against (a city bond issue that would have paid for) upgrading waste treatment and providing additional capacity in the sewer system. Mayor Tom Bradley has never had any support from the council in upgrading waste-water treatment, even though he has worked behind the scenes, and consistently.

So how are you going to poke at it? I think the question’s almost academic. Practically speaking, the only thing you can do is go to the courts. To me this is truly tragic, because there wouldn’t be any life on this planet if it weren’t for the ocean. I think we should give the ocean enormous respect and care. They tell us our citizens have a vote, it’s a democracy, and the votes for the ocean are not there; they’ve never been there. And I despair that they ever will be there. And I regard that as a tragedy. Q: Some people say, “Why should I care if some fish, some marine life, are dying out?” How does pollution in Santa Monica Bay affect people? A: I collect and supply specimens, marine organisms, for educational research, most of it into biomedical problems--cancer research, research in immunology. There’s a substance isolated from some marine organisms now that is in clinical testing as an anti-herpes agent. There’s a lot of interest in (using) chemical substances from marine organisms in cancer therapy. These substances are extracted from all those funny little different kinds of marine organisms out there that seem to have no meaning to anybody but yet may have significance for everybody.

In addition, pollution in marine organisms can make them unfit for human consumption because of the magnification of (toxic) substances as they move up the food chain and accumulate in humans, with adverse effects. But suddenly, in the last few years, people have realized that it’s healthy to eat fish, and they are eating more and more of it. People are eating fish, but some species are becoming contaminated.

And then there’s the whole problem of direct contact with water that’s polluted with sewage. The EPA’s consultants have pointed out that there’s a higher incidence of disease, a higher incidence of infection, that results when people swim in water contaminated with sewage. These disease-causing organisms might be ingested, swallowed along with an accidental intake of seawater, or they might enter through a mucous membrane such as the eye. Q: Can the damage to the bay be reversed? A: There’s no technology available for removing the heavy metals and the deposits of chlorinated hydrocarbons (DDT and PCBs) that are out there on the sea floor. It’s one more example of the impracticality of discharging things into the ocean and relying upon the ocean to take care of it. Once it’s out there, there’s no way of retrieving it. Q: If you were suddenly put in charge of cleaning up pollution in this state, what would you do? A: I’d tell (the pollution-producing industries): “If you’re generating a hazardous waste, that’s your problem. We’ll help you with it, but you’re going to solve that problem in your own plant or through some cooperative within your own industry. But you’re not going to externalize that problem by dumping it into the public sewers and down the drain and into the ocean, or up the stacks and into the atmosphere.”

The other side of the agenda is, what are you going to do about those sites that are already degraded and contaminated? People--agencies--have not been willing to assume these responsibilities. Yet, the statistics show that there are increasing birth abnormalities in infants, precisely the same thing we were seeing (in marine life) 30 years ago in the ocean, when the ocean was serving as an early warning system.

Fortunately, I don’t have that job, and I’m not applying for it, either. Q: You’ve been compared to Ed (Doc) Ricketts, the Cannery Row biologist who collected marine specimens in the 1930s and ‘40s and fostered greater understanding of the delicate balance between humans and other living creatures. How does that strike you? A: Ed Ricketts and I are very different people, but everyone who lives off of the ocean is individualistic. Ricketts was a tremendous intellect, and I won’t profess to be as intellectually endowed. I feel very humbled in that comparison. He was working in a time when a lot of the technical problems, the pollution that exists now, didn’t trouble him. It simply wasn’t around. He was heavily into metaphysics, and I don’t have much time for that. I’m sure if he were alive today and saw what I am seeing, he wouldn’t spend much time on metaphysics either. There’s just too much to do.