Surfrider Makes Waves in Effort to Protect Endangered Coastline

Check the waves. It’s times like these that try a surf-activist’s soul.

Welling up from a fetch way out to sea, mounds of water 8-feet high come hurtling over the southern most groove of Scripps underwater canyon.

Moments later, the sandbar at South Peak massages and bends the first mound--now a mountain, its face stretching to 14-feet. Thick plumes of spray toss skyward, a lip of water plummets, and nine seconds pass before the most nasty, barreling section of the wave grinds to completion. The wave implodes mercilessly. Then spits.

Surfers hoot in praise of its form, and stroke in earnest for the next one.

For the past seven days, the big-wave phenomenon has been repeated at Black’s Beach in La Jolla and, with minor variation, at surf spots dotting the San Diego County coastline.

Scott Jenkins, a research engineer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a driving force behind beach activism in San Diego, has seen the effect exceptional waves has had on surfers, he being one for 16 years.

They are fixated at first, Jenkins says, and hitting the surf is all that matters. Over time, they see a broader picture. They realize the hazard that sewer overflow has posed at many local breaks. The next step: They become concerned over what has happened to the environment.

Through an organization of coastal activists called the Surfrider Foundation, Jenkins has rallied hundreds of local surfers to protest damage suffered by ocean and shore.

“Getting involved with this stuff cuts into your water time,” said Jenkins, the foundation’s environmental director. “But then again you get the kind of activists whose connection with the ocean is that they spend so much time in it. Most people oppose waste dumping and water pollution, but the surfers and water enthusiasts are, arguably, the ones who face the worst risks. And they’re the ones becoming committed now.”

So Jenkins knows the spell a surf-stoke can cast. The San Diego Surfrider chapter enlisted 2,000 members during 1991, its first year. The foundation, formed in Malibu in 1984, now boasts 14 chapters and 15,000 members around the country. There is a staff of six, and the yearly operating budget is $600,000, said Jack Grubb, the foundation’s executive director.

Contrary to anti-Establishment, anti-intellectual surfer stereotypes, environmentalists in the foundation have proven themselves formidable advocates for causes nationwide.

The foundation has served as ecological watchdog for coastal industries and regulatory agencies, and has waged several legal and legislative battles to maintain water quality. Surfrider is also an advocate for public access to secluded beaches, and for replenishing sand at surf spots deprived by ill-planned development.

In 1985, the group sued the California Coastal Commission for approving a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ project to build a mile-long breakwater off Imperial Beach. Designed to block the path of waves eroding the shore, the breakwater would ruin the surf in the surrounding area for three miles, and may have caused residual erosion nearby, the foundation argued.

After a protracted legal battle, the city of Imperial Beach abandoned the permit for the project, said Peter Kaufman, the chief deputy attorney general who represented the Coastal Commission.

The case was unique, Kaufman said, in that two groups that should be aligned with each other were at odds. The Coastal Commission oversees the state Department of Parks and Recreation and the issuing of building permits along the coast.

“Usually it’s the developers who sue us,” Kaufman said.

The foundation has another suit pending against the Coastal Commission and the state Department of Parks and Recreation. The complaint is against “iron rangers,” or unattended kiosks, where users of beachside parking lots are expected to deposit a $4 fee. Surfrider has claimed the parking charges violate the public access guaranteed by the state Constitution and the Coastal Act of 1970.

The state’s lawyers say Surfrider’s position is untenable, and that, perhaps, the young foundation’s lack of advocacy experience is showing.

“This is more of a budgetary issue than it is legal,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Joe Barbieri. “We actually think their energy could be better expended somewhere else. In this case, probably the Legislature.”

Legislative lobbying is already in the works, however. At the foundation’s San Diego chapter meeting in January, organizers distributed petitions for the Free Beaches Act of 1992, a proposed ballot measure authored by Free Our Beaches, an environmental coalition. The measure would limit fees for state parks, and guarantee that the state allocate money to operate its beaches without overburdening users.

Although still a relative newcomer among environmental activist groups, Surfrider has been a spoiler in some instances, a coastal gadfly in others. In September, the group won a $6-million settlement against two Northern California paper mills, after alleging 40,000 violations of the federal Clean Water Act.

The case, a joint suit filed with the Environmental Protection Agency, had dogged federal regulators for years. Jenkins and a battery of environmental engineers, oceanographers and lawyers from Surfrider are now quizzing city planners on a $4.2-billion proposed upgrade of San Diego’s waste water management system.

Surfrider has also complemented the work of national and international environmental groups. Using the argot of the beach to open up local surf communities and recruit foot soldiers to the cause, the foundation has succeeded where larger, broad-based groups dare not tread.

A narrower focus than Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and the Cousteau Society, Surfrider’s beach emphasis won credibility with surfers, said Blair Palese, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace, an environmental protest organization.

“There’s so many causes out there, it’s difficult for a group to distinguish itself,” Palese said. “Surfers put themselves on the map with the water toxics issue.”

With each issue, the foundation’s level of sophistication increases, but stereotypes die hard.”

“Some people still think we are a bunch of beach bums and airheads,” said Surfrider member Laurie Andres, 29, a public relations account executive. “It’s stupid, but it doesn’t bother me. We know what’s behind the stereotypes . . . people are stuck in the past.”

Andres joined Surfrider a year ago, shortly after she began surfing. About the same time, Andres contracted a respiratory infection she attributes to water pollution. The high incidence of respiratory, ear, and eye infections among surfers has lead many others to ponder how they will address frailties in the ecosystem.

“Sometimes it’s better to ignore everything they say about stereotypes,” Andres said, “and just keep doing what we are doing.”