Surfers Wax Scientific, Test Waters

In a squat industrial building near one of the state’s most prized surfing spots, a group of environmentalist surfers has opened a lab to test the quality of the waters they ride.

With a handful of volunteers and a building donated by the local sewer authority, members of the national nonprofit Surfrider Foundation will begin sampling seawater this week at a spot called Surfer’s Beach, near the town of Half Moon Bay on the San Francisco Peninsula.

They expect to have results of the weekly tests available by the next morning. It takes San Mateo County as long as three days to post results from its water-testing program. Pollution levels fluctuate rapidly in the ocean, so information can quickly become outdated.

“If the county is sampling on a Monday and you take your kids to the beach on Sunday, that information is already a week old,” said Ed Larenas, chairman of the San Mateo County chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, which is overseeing the effort.

The water will be tested for dangerous levels of E. coli and enterococcus bacteria, both of which cause illness in people. Larenas said he hoped to post the group’s findings on the Internet, in local surf shops and over the radio.

Like many of his fellow surfers, Larenas admits that if the waves are good, he often surfs even when he knows the water is badly polluted, such as after a rainstorm.

The biochemist says he and his fellow volunteers hope that having new information about contamination levels will help them work more effectively with nearby landowners and local authorities to identify and eradicate sources of contamination.

The group has already made substantial inroads with the operators of nearby ranches and horse stables, reducing contamination levels in San Vicente Creek, which flows into the Fitzgerald Marine Preserve.

“This part of it is really simple,” Larenas said, gesturing toward the freshly painted lab. “Getting this to happen is not so much a scientific hurdle as an organizational hurdle.”

Among his fellow volunteers running the lab are a professor of marine biology, several engineers and a planner with the state Coastal Conservancy.

The 20-year-old Surfrider Foundation, which works to clean up coastlines and prevent water pollution, has about two dozen such labs around the country. The new lab is near the legendary Mavericks big-wave surf break. Its proximity to the ocean is one reason that its turn-around time will be so much quicker than the county’s.

The local Surfrider chapter raised about $10,000 to furnish the lab, and organizers hope to expand the testing program soon to other popular beaches.

In a separate program, the foundation provides 14 volunteers who aid the county with its existing water-testing program. With their help, the county has been able to dramatically increase testing.

Additionally, the volunteer work frees up county staff to spend more time addressing the causes of pollution, said Dean Peterson, San Mateo County’s director of environmental health.

The foundation helped the county set up a database to track pollution over time. The information used to be stored “in a shoebox with slips of paper in it,” said Tim Duff, vice chairman of the local Surfrider chapter.

Because the new lab is not state-certified, Peterson says he cannot rely on its findings. But he adds that if the volunteers detect troubling levels of contamination, the county can follow up with its own tests.

“We really don’t see this as doing anything different than what we’ve done for many years, as far as the sampling goes,” Peterson said.

“We’re hoping it will be used for educational purposes, to get people more interested and involved in the marine environment and in how folks on land really affect it.”