O.C. Group Rides a Wave of Environmental Activism : Ecology: Over 10 years, Surfrider has grown into a nationally respected beach conservation organization.

Amid plates of tacos, enchiladas and rounds of Mexican beer, the meeting was called to order. Assembled were a United Parcel Service truck driver who can hang ten, a T-shirt designer from Malibu who’s great with “off the lips,” and Hawk, a self-described “troublemaker” from Ventura.

Hardly your run-of-the-mill environmentalists.

But between forkfuls of frijoles, the 35 men and women who came to Dana Point a year ago from Oceanside to as far north as Pacifica formed California’s first Coalition of Surfing--an umbrella for 17 surf clubs more intent on fighting for environmental causes than scouting the next kegger party.

Watching the proceedings was a smiling Jake Grubb. As executive director of the Surfrider Foundation, a San Clemente-based beach conservation group, Grubb played a key role in shaping the coalition.

And now, as the foundation prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary in August, the coalition has become the foundation’s chief ally in exercising a unique and powerful brand of environmental activism.

“We can’t have six people in an office in San Clemente dictating what’s going to be done in California and the nation,” Grubb said. “Our future calls for us getting a network of environmental watchdogs. And, the only way we can do that is by building coalitions.”

Surfing the new coalition wave is Eugene Eudaly, 47, a Laguna Beach cabinetmaker and Surfrider Foundation member, who was selected to head the coalition. “We can now have our own lobby group. We think it could become a blueprint for beach activism that can take the Surfrider Foundation into the 21st Century,” he said.

Can it be that 10 years have rolled by since the Surfrider Foundation first emerged while opposing plans to drain a nearby creek that would have ruined the famed Malibu surfing beach?

It began, said founder Glenn Hening, 43, to help improve what was then surfing’s outlaw image, which made surfers “one step above bikers.”

“One of the things that struck me back then,” said Hening in a recent interview from his Oxnard home, “was that some biker organizations were doing Toys for Tots projects, something good for the community. And I told myself surfers never do anything like that. But we should.”

Now, Surfrider has 27,000 members in 21 chapters in seven coastal states including Hawaii, said Grubb. It has affiliates in Australia, Japan, France, England and Canada. It has an environmental issues team that sends experts on conservation, coastal law and biology to testify before Congress. It has waged successful court battles against major polluters. And it has begun Respect the Beach, a touted program that has recruited hundreds of high school students to test ocean waters for fecal bacteria.

“Surfers are so blessed because of what they’ve been able to enjoy in the ocean,” said Hening. “If they don’t do something to maintain the ocean for future generations, they won’t get through St. Peter’s gate because Peter will be saying, ‘You can’t come in, because you didn’t leave anything for future generations.’ ”

This call to conscience has been heeded.

For example, Eudaly, who is also president of the 200-member Doheny Longboard Assn., said Doheny surfers donated $2,500 from their dues to Surfrider. He added, “We all share that sense of responsibility, that if we don’t give something back, then who will?”

Can it be that a maturing process has mellowed these once hellbent Californians whose main mission in life was to ride primo waves? What happened?

“We got old,” said Pierce Flynn, Surfrider’s 40-year-old communications director.

In fact, 37% of Surfrider’s membership are primarily surfers in their 30s and 40s. The membership supports about 75% of Surfrider’s annual $500,000 budget. The group relies on private grants and individual donors for the rest.

Many of its members were weaned on surfing during the ‘60s. It was a time of rollicking good fun, long boards and Dick Dale music. But the old VW vans with psychedelic paint are long gone, replaced by minivans with cruise control.

Flynn describes the older, ahem, mature surfer as surfing’s new vanguard of eco-surfers. A look at Surfrider’s membership finds many teachers, chemists, biologists and lawyers--people with families and the economic means to make a change.

In the past, many surfers would drive to the ocean and park. If they saw an oil sheen or untreated sewage, they would surf nonetheless. Irritated skin and hacking coughs came with the turf.

Now, they’re more likely to report the pollution. Not only has this approach caught on, and is encouraged by Surfrider and many other beach conservation groups, but Surfrider has added an environmental militancy to the mix. If polluters refuse to shape up, it could mean a legal battle.

“I am quite aware of the (Surfrider) group,” said Port Hueneme City Council member Dorill B. Wright, a longtime member of the California Coastal Commission. “They have appeared before us on many occasions, generally with helpful and constructive things to consider.”

When Surfrider joined with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and won a major court battle two years ago, Flynn said, it prompted then-EPA Administrator William K. Reilly to remark, “The EPA likes surfers. We consider them the new indicator species.”

(“Basically, they’re watching us to see if we mutate,” Flynn said.)

“I did say that. That’s true,” Reilly said this week, laughing. The veteran of the Bush Administration is now a fellow at Stanford University. “Surfers are in the elements every day. No one is as intensively exposed to the elements as surfers--air, water, pollutants and all the rest. They often tell us about pollution and things we don’t know about.”

In its 10 years, some of Surfrider’s activities have included:

* Helping to persuade Chevron in 1993 to extend an outfall emissions pipe to two-thirds of a mile offshore. Previously, the pipe dumped directly into the surf zone.

* Joining with the EPA and winning a $5.8-million settlement in fines--the second-largest Clean Water Act lawsuit in U.S. history--in 1991 against two pulp mills in Humboldt County. The mills also had to spend $50 million to reduce toxic discharges from their oceanfront pulp mills near Eureka.

* Helping to block a proposed marina that the foundation believed would have destroyed a historic natural wetlands as well as miles of sandy coast at Bolsa Chica State Beach in Huntington Beach.

* Campaigning to divert a major Los Angeles storm drain, which had been polluting the beach and forcing its closure for years, into a sewer system for proper treatment.

* Creating a Blue Water Task Force program that includes Adopt-A-Beach, a storm drain stenciling program that warns the public against dumping toxics that spill into the ocean, and recruiting school students to test ocean water for pollution.

* Developing a restoration proposal for San Juan Creek in Dana Point to prevent continued beach closures from sewage spills during heavy rains. The project, if successful, can become a blueprint for restoring wetlands across the nation.

* Bringing a complaint before a state regional water quality control board alleging that the city of San Diego underreported a massive pipeline leak that spilled untreated sewage between December, 1992, and June, 1993. The city was fined $830,000.

Barry Lacter, a spokesman for Portland-based Louisiana-Pacific Corp., said the corporation has acquired a healthy respect for Surfrider. In 1991, Louisiana-Pacific and Simpson Paper Co. agreed to pay nearly $5.8 million in fines and stop polluting the ocean off Humboldt County because of the lawsuit brought by the EPA and Surfrider.

“We were once an adversary, I hope not anymore,” Lacter said.

Flynn said Surfrider had documented more than 40,000 violations of the federal Clean Water Act. The agreement was the second-largest ever under the act.

Surfrider officials also point with pride to the fact that Louisiana-Pacific has stopped bleaching its pulp with chemicals laced with dioxins and has eliminated use of any toxic chlorine, the first pulp mill in North America to do so. Simpson Paper has since shut its plant.

The landmark settlement not only put Surfrider on the map as an environmental group to be reckoned with, but also nearly caused its downfall.

Part of the settlement called for Surfrider to receive $350,000 to make environmental improvements in Humboldt and $500,000 in legal fee awards. The problem emerged when Surfrider’s attorney split the fees with another law firm that had helped on the case--a move that caused a storm on the Surfrider’s board of directors and jeopardized the organization’s private, nonprofit status.

“For two years, our board haggled over this and it was just one fight after another,” Grubb said.

In addition, Surfrider hasn’t completed the improvements even though it has been 2 1/2 years since both companies created the $350,000 fund. The original plan was to build solar-powered showers and a conference center at the beach. But Grubb said local surfers did not want those two projects and Surfrider hasn’t been able to come up with good alternatives.

“We’ve been working with the Bureau of Land Management on alternatives and we’re trying to satisfy Louisiana-Pacific, because according to the court settlement, we need to work as partners,” Grubb said.

Flynn, Surfrider’s communications director, said it marked a turning point. On one side were members of Surfrider’s board who still thought the group was just a bunch of surfers. On the other side were board members who saw the organization growing into a nationally respected conservation group with legal clout.

“The visionaries won out,” Flynn said. “For us, it was time for surfing to grow up.”