Heal the Bay's 17th Annual CA Beach Report

[CompuDude]

http://www.healthebay.org/news/2007/05_23_brcannual/default.asp

Very sad to see how many of our local beaches are listed on the "Beach Bummers" portion of the report.

I was quite startled to see Avalon's beach listed in the top 4 worst, however! Any idea why? I haven't had a chance to read over the whole report just yet, just this executive summary, so I apologize if I'm missing something obvious...

 

[drbill]

I have issues with the way Heal the Bay changed the water sampling protocols that yield such results. Sampling used to be done in knee deep water and bacterial counts were, in general, much lower. Now sampling is done in ankle deep water. Duh! Where would you expect to find high bacterial counts? At the interface between the beach and the water is a darned good place to look.

Am I bitter? Well, I don't think Avalon Bay deserves to be #4 in the list of "beach bummers." When I first moved here (late 60's), it was common to see brown "sea cucumbers" drifting by in the waters of the bay. It was disgusting. I stopped swimming in the Bay, chosing outer waters... or just get wet by SCUBA diving.

The City of Avalon has done a lot to ensure cleaner waters out here. Ask any boater who has been banned from the harbor due to even a tiny accidental spill detected by the dye tablets issued to each boat and placed in their holding tanks. This has certainly made our waters FAR cleaner than they were 35-40 years ago. And many other steps have been taken as well, although there are additional ones that need addressing.

We are fortunate that we have storm drain diverters to trap much of the non-point source run-off in the Avalon watershed. We don't get the runoff issues and extreme levels of bacteria that many mainland beaches have due to this and sewage overflows.

Stepping off soapbox to finish editing underwater video from the clear, clean waters of Catalina.

 

[riguerin]

"Los Angeles County has 7 of the 10 most polluted beaches in California" :l:

So let me get this straight, we make a huge improvement if we could just somehow get rid of LA County ?