Making a Splash : Officials Beginning to Listen to Heal the Bay’s Campaign for Cleanup Effort

If any doubts lingered about the clout of Heal the Bay, the events of recent days may have dispelled them.

Increasingly, the environmental group’s simple message that the pollution of Santa Monica Bay must stop is being heard in the corridors of power.

Last week, for example, after Heal the Bay had threatened to sue to force a decision, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tentatively denied the county’s request for a waiver that would have allowed continued ocean dumping of waste water that fails to meet pollution standards.

Two of the group’s founders have been appointed recently to influential environmental posts by Mayor Tom Bradley.

And late last month, two candidates for governor, Sen. Pete Wilson and Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, appeared at Heal the Bay’s annual meeting in Brentwood to present their environmental agendas for the state. Their presence was a testament to the group’s influence. “We’ve come of age,” said Dorothy Green, one of Heal the Bay’s founders.

In less than five years, the organization has grown from half a dozen activists concerned about sewage pollution to a full-blown cause. It now has 7,500 members, a budget of $430,000, an educational museum in the Santa Monica Place shopping mall and a multifaceted environmental agenda.

Heal the Bay’s call to action, forcefully delivered in slick television ads and splashy graphics, has attracted 2,500 new members in each of the last two years.

Their numbers and outspoken advocacy has caught the attention of elected officials and government bureaucrats from City Hall to the nation’s Capitol.

“They have come very far, very fast,” said Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), whose congressional district hugs the bay. “They have become one of the premier environmental organizations in Southern California. They have focused very needed attention very effectively on Santa Monica Bay. They have highlighted the problems in a focused, credible, substantive fashion.”

The nonprofit organization got its start in the summer of 1985 when the city of Los Angeles’ sewage spills and bay pollution became front-page news.

At the time, the EPA was pressing a long-standing lawsuit against the city for failing to meet federal water quality standards. And Gov. George Deukmejian, in a prelude to the 1986 governor’s race, was attacking Bradley for presiding over pollution of the bay.

Heal the Bay stepped into the breach by organizing at the beach.

“The city was one of the worst polluters in the whole country,” Green said. Heal the Bay helped publicize the magnitude of the problem.

“People didn’t know how bad the bay was,” added Felicia Marcus, another of the group’s founders. “People were stunned to learn about the DDT problem, about the sludge dumped into the ocean and the sewage spills.”

The loosely organized, predominantly Westside group began to fight the city’s request for a waiver of federal requirements that sewage receive full secondary treatment, to remove most of the solid material, before being piped out into the bay.

“The issue of ocean pollution suddenly became something the public was concerned about,” recalled Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica). “Heal the Bay sprang to life filling that organizational vacuum.”

In February, 1987, a federal judge approved the settlement of the EPA’s lawsuit after the city agreed to stop dumping sewage sludge into the bay and to upgrade the massive Hyperion treatment plant in El Segundo. Heal the Bay was designated a friend of the court and assigned the task of monitoring the city’s progress.

Good timing and the broad popularity of the cause were essential to the group’s initial success, but the founders acknowledge there was a larger mission from the very beginning.

Many people in Los Angeles, Green said, have “a kind of mystical attachment to the ocean,” and fighting for swimmable and fishable waters is something people can readily grasp. From the outset, Green, a longtime environmental activist, recognized that Santa Monica Bay could be a rallying point for a much broader environmental agenda.

The name Heal the Bay was chosen because “it communicates hope,” Green said. “That’s the main thing we wanted to sell.”

“Who can be against it?” Marcus said. “Tell us who is for polluting the bay.”

From the starting point of the bay and its beaches, Heal the Bay has moved upstream, so to speak, toward the sources of pollution. Among the group’s goals this year is a reduction of the amount of toxic material that enters the bay via storm drains. A related campaign will focus on promoting proper disposal of hazardous household wastes.

Green acknowledges that as the agenda broadens, the challenge of keeping the public aroused gets tougher. Getting thousands of people to fight pollution of the bay has proven to be far easier than enlisting them in other causes, such as the battle for clean air.

Heal the Bay’s leaders say they must take pains to avoid becoming either too shrill or too sweeping in their goals. Carefully and deliberately, they have built an identity different from other environmental groups.

“We’ve done our share of confrontational stuff,” Green said. “But once you have (elected officials’) attention, our strategy is to sit down and work with them.”

“We do our homework,” Marcus added. “We have become part of the process so we can’t be written off. We’re polite.”

In fact, both Marcus and Green have become insiders themselves. Last month, Mayor Bradley named Green to the Los Angeles Water and Power Commission, which oversees the city’s Department of Water and Power. This gives Heal the Bay a strong voice on a board whose policies affect a wide range of environmental issues, from water resources to energy conservation.

Marcus, meanwhile, was appointed by Bradley last summer to serve on the Board of Public Works. In that capacity, she will help supervise the city’s sewage plant improvement project.

The group’s new executive director, Tiiu Lukk, speaks in strategic terms about achieving linked goals of public education and action.

“We are trying to go about it in a systematic, intelligent, businesslike way,” Lukk said. “People invest in this organization. They want a return on their investment. They want the bay to be cleaned up.”

EPA officials also give the group credit for its efforts to educate the public about bay pollution and its ability to apply pressure for government action. “Heal the Bay can quickly mobilize a significant number of people regarding their environmental issues,” said Nancy Lindsay, who represents the federal agency on the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project.

Even Heal the Bay’s adversaries concede the group is effective.

After joining EPA’s lawsuit against the city’s waiver of Clean Water Act standards, the group turned its attention to defeating the county sanitation districts’ request for a waiver from full secondary treatment standards.

Last week, EPA tentatively denied the request. If the decision stands, the county agency could be forced to spend $350 million to upgrade its sewage discharge off the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Bob Miele, head of technical services for the county sanitation districts, said Heal the Bay worked “very hard to bring about a denial.”

Miele noted that the group last fall threatened to sue the EPA if the federal agency failed to make a swift decision on the county’s waiver request.

The districts argue that they need to continue discharging some sewage solids off White’s Point to ensure that bottom sediments contaminated with hundreds of tons of DDT remain buried. Heal the Bay disagrees.

Miele readily admits the group has become “a powerful force” in Southern California. “They will be a player in this whether anybody likes it or not.”