UC Study Is No Day at the Beach

* Dana Parsons’ column April 9 (“UC Profs Better Remember the Sunscreen”) was way off the mark. Your columnist seems to have a problem with our doing a “study” on “beaches.”

It’s certainly true that beaches are used for relaxing, and studies usually mean hard work. But beach recreation is an important part of life in Southern California. By studying what people like and don’t like about beaches, we can understand what can be done to improve the quality of beach recreation.

If Parsons had troubled to find out more about the study, he would have learned that we will not be spending any of the money on suntan lotion.

Most of the money will go for telephone surveys of up to 2,000 area households at intervals over the year, asking them whether they went to the beach, why not if they didn’t, what they did at the beach, and whether they were affected, for example, when Huntington State Beach was closed last summer.

Our job as researchers is to design and test the surveys and analyze the data. As it happens, my colleague Linwood Pendleton, at USC, does go to the beach in L.A. quite often, but he does so on his own nickel. The only tan the rest of us get is through radiation from our computer screens.

So what does the public get for the $800,000 cost of the study?

People spend a lot of money on beach recreation in Southern California, and the enjoyment that they get out of beaches is very important to them.

Protecting the area’s beaches--fixing polluted storm water, beach replenishment, etc.--can be very expensive, with costs in the billions.

At present, we don’t have much data on the impact on the local economy, or the value of the enhanced enjoyment to the public, of fixing up beaches.

The popular beaches can attract 75,000 people a day in the summer. If one of those beaches is closed for two or three days, it can have a major impact on the quality of life.

This study will help us understand what the public wants, how they are affected by beach closures and how best to spend the money available for improving our beaches.

MICHAEL HANEMANN

Professor

UC Berkeley