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 [...]

Purgatory in Paradise

Last Friday, the Regional Water Board finally held the long overdue enforcement hearing on the chronic pollution problems at Paradise Cove.  At stake was a $1.6 million fine. The Kissel Co., owner of the mobile home park at the cove, has been violating the Clean Water Act for over 15 years with numerous raw sewage spills [...]

Trumping Public Health

The Los Angeles Times today examines the failed Trump Ocean Resort in Baja, just below Tijuana. The failure of the massive 525-unit vacation home complex has cost investors millions.
The controversy over the use and abuse of Donald Trump’s “good name” has become the focus of the high-profile collapse. But what hasn’t been mentioned prominently is [...]

A Real Beach Bummer

Imagine this scenario. An old sewer line ruptures because tons of garbage gets piled on top of the ground above it. The sewer spews over 1 million gallons per day into the nearby river. As a result, the health agency closes miles of popular beaches to protect the public.
The closure continues for days, weeks and [...]

Delusional Dubai

While skimming the Sunday Travel section in the Los Angeles Times, an article about a new resort in Dubai called Atlantis, The Palm caught my eye. After all, what could be more of an ocean conservation disaster than the Atlantis Hotel in the Bahamas?  You’d be surprised.

Tainted Legacy

Last night I joined my colleagues from Santa Monica Baykeeper, Surfrider Foundation and the Malibu Surfing Assn. in an appeal to the Malibu City Council on the Legacy Park project EIR.  If I had wanted that kind of abuse, I could have gone to Canter’s and ordered a corned beef on Wonder Bread with extra [...]

Life in the Time of Cholera

The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has no end in sight.  The numbers are stunning.  Some 60,000 people infected and more than 3,100 deaths caused by one of the most preventable environmental diseases on the face of the planet.  Cholera has spread to other African nations, including South Africa, Zambia and Malawi.  Not only is the [...]

Septic Policy

Nine years ago, I worked with then-Assemblymember Hannah-Beth Jackson and the California environmental health agencies to draft Assembly Bill 885,which finally required the State Water Board to regulate water quality from septic systems in a systematic way.  Shockingly, the state had never required water quality performance standards for septic systems.  The cornerstone of the bill [...]

And You Thought S.M. Bay Was Bad

Winter is upon us.  Cold temperatures.  Rain. Mudslides.  The first snow of the year.  Bad driving.  And the holiday tradition of an ungodly amount of trash flushed into local bays and ending up on our beaches.  Trash is what you can see.  The fecal bacteria counts explode to levels that microbiology labs have trouble measuring [...]

Cynical About the ‘Bu

On Thursday, the Regional Water Board unanimously approved a resolution requiring Board staff to negotiate a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Malibu for permitting on-site wastewater treatment systems (OWTS, or septic systems).  In addition, staff was ordered to move forward on an OWTS moratorium for the Malibu Civic Center area.  Both of these actions [...]