Bay Is Cleaner, but Rain Is a Problem

In a five-year assessment of Santa Monica Bay released Thursday, scientists and public officials reported that although the bay has grown healthier, it remains plagued by seasonal relapses when storm waters flush toxic pollutants, sewage and other urban filth into its waters.

The evaluation of the bay’s health comes as this past week’s powerful storm left Southern California’s beaches littered with debris and its coastal waters roiling and colored chocolate brown. The bay’s most popular beaches are posted off-limits to surfers and swimmers because of untreated sewage that has gushed from broken sewer lines.

“Obviously, the storms [and polluted runoff] of the past few weeks are exceptions,” said Los Angeles Councilman Jack Weiss. “But perhaps it takes exceptional events to bring home to the public the urban impact on the bay.”

Aside from the most recent sewer line failures, the trend in recent years shows a steady decrease in the size and frequency of sewage spills, said the councilman, who also is chairman of the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, which wrote the 45-page State of the Bay report.

He said five beach closures last year were due to the health risks from bacteria and viruses associated with sewage spills. “Our goal is to bring that down to zero closures in the future,” Weiss said.

The report, which was released at an all-day conference, tallied progress since the last environmental health assessment in 1998 of the Santa Monica Bay, which extends from Palos Verdes Peninsula to Point Dume.

Some of the successes were attributed to the addition of a second level of sewage treatment at the Hyperion Treatment Plant in El Segundo in 1998 and the Los Angeles County Sanitation plant in Carson in 2002.

As a result of those upgrades, the annual discharge of toxic heavy metals has decreased by 98% and solid waste by 93%.

Mark Gold, director of the nonprofit environmental group Heal the Bay, said one of the most encouraging signs has been the return of a few endangered steelhead trout. “We didn’t find steelhead in the 1990s and now we are seeing them in Topanga Creek, Malibu Creek and Arroyo Sequit,” Gold said.

Local officials remain concerned about white croaker and a few other fish species that are still highly contaminated by DDT dumped into the bay decades ago by a defunct pesticide manufacturing plant. An effort by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to “cap” the DDT on the seafloor by burying it under tons of sand seems to have stirred it up like specks in a snow globe, officials said.

Linwood Pendleton, an associate professor at UCLA’s School of Public Health, said the report failed to measure the impact of bacteria and toxic pollution on people. “We still don’t know how many people are getting sick from swimming in the Santa Monica Bay or eating fish from the bay and whether those numbers are going up or down,” Pendleton said.

Most officials agree that the largest remaining problem is urban runoff. Nearly a third of the 414-square-mile watershed is urbanized and collects motor oil drippings, pet waste, fertilizer, tire and brake pad dust, along with tons of trash, which then get swept from storm drains into the bay.

David Nahai, a member of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, said state and local officials have set a schedule to reduce trash and bacteria coming off the streets and lined up hundred of millions of dollars in state and Los Angeles bond money for cleanup.

“A lot of good things are in place, but they haven’t borne fruit,” Nahai said. “Eighty percent of our beaches are unacceptably contaminated in wet weather, although the opposite is true in dry weather -- 80% are in good shape.”

The biggest obstacle, Nahai said, is political resistance. “We need all of the small municipalities to come on board and help with this horrendous pollution problem that our region faces.”