Victory at Sea

The Regional Water Board voted 5-2 last night to approve a moratorium on septic systems in the Malibu civic center area.  In a bid to clean up chronically polluted Surfrider Beach, the measure bans any new septic systems in the area and mandates removal of existing systems by 2015 for commercial properties and 2019 for [...]

Remembering Dorothy

A year ago today, California’s environmental community lost a giant: Dorothy Green. Tireless. Visionary. Selfless.  Brilliant.  Fearless. Passionate. Warm.  Driven. Inspiring.  Leader. Mentor. Friend.  These words only begin to describe this remarkable woman.
I miss her each and every day.  Every time I see an article or e-mail on California’s water crisis, I think of Dorothy.  [...]

Deja Poo

Scientists claiming that poorly treated sewage poses no ecological harm to local marine life.  Bureaucrats claiming that their sewage treatment system has a spotless record despite a long history of major sewage spills. The mayor claiming that the large city deserves a waiver from the full secondary treatment requirements of the 1972 Clean Water Act [...]

A Visit from the EPA

Heal the Bay staffers and board members had the honor of meeting Thursday with new EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at our Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. We gave the administrator a brief tour of the facility and then we sat down to give her an overview of Heal the Bay’s latest work. We covered a lot [...]

Left Holding the Bag

Shocked doesn’t begin to describe what Heal the Bay staff felt Friday when we opened the Coastal Cleanup Day trash bags sent to us by the California Coastal Commission.  Betrayed isn’t quite right either.  Nauseous is more like it.
The plastic trash bags included the logos of some of our biggest opponents in the fight against [...]

Child’s Play

Heal the Bay organizes hundreds of events each year, ranging from beach cleanups to habitat restorations to our annual Bring Back the Beach fundraising dinner. But my favorite event has to be Ed Day, held the Friday before Coastal Cleanup Day.
Every September, roughly 800 third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students come out to the beach for [...]

Déjà vu

Today’s guest blogger is Kirsten James, Water Quality Director at Heal the Bay
History has a habit of repeating itself. Nearly 25 years ago, Heal the Bay was born when Dorothy Green and her friends fought the Environmental Protection Agency’s 301(h) wavier for Los Angeles’ Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant. Despite Clean Water Act requirements for secondary treatment, [...]

Pay to Pollute

Our good friends at the American Chemistry Council are at it again.  No, they aren’t spending a fortune fighting for babies’ rights to ingest carcinogens through leaching baby bottles and toxic toys.
This time the ACC is trying to buy an election in Seattle.
The petrochemical industry has dropped over $1million on a disinformation campaign to convince [...]

Street Smart

The City of Santa Monica has unveiled the green-street project on Bicknell Avenue. The one-block stretch between Barnard and Nielson now can probably infiltrate and treat the runoff generated by a Class 5 hurricane.  Among the structural Best Management Practices used on the street: porous concrete, curb cuts and below-grade landscaping with climate appropriate landscaping, [...]

No Day at the Beach

This week, the State Water Board heard Los Angeles County’s appeal on the inclusion of enforceable beach water quality standards in the county’s stormwater permit.  The county appealed the permit despite the fact that the L.A. Regional Board modified the permit nearly three years ago and it has been relatively successful in getting a lot [...]