Victory in Ventura!

After a grueling and tense 12-hour hearing, the Southern California Regional Water Board last night approved a new stormwater permit for Ventura County on a 5-1 vote.  The permit follows over two years of contentious debate involving Ventura County, its muncipalities, the Building Industry Assn., the environmental community and the Regional Board.
Over the last year, [...]

Stormwater Redux

Clearer minds at L.A. City Hall prevailed Monday on the issue of raising stormwater fees. The city chose to develop a game plan for passing the fee rather than rushing it to the ballot.
Now the city can focus on passing the long-awaited Water Quality Plan, the blueprint for cleaning up local polluted waters. In addition, [...]

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 [...]

The Definition of Insanity

Late into the night Tuesday — the temporal fate of most environmental measures in Santa Monica — the Santa Monica City Council delayed the first reading of an ordinance that would ban the distribution of plastic bags after receiving a last-minute opposition letter from the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition. 
The draft ordinance called for a [...]

Restoring the Bay

 The  Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission unanimously approved a new Bay Restoration Plan on Thursday.  Dr. Shelley Luce, executive director of the Bay Commission, and her dedicated staff put together the new recommendations: the long-awaited sequel to the original 1995 plan.  Since the mid-90s, a lot has happened to help restore the Bay. Hyperion and [...]

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 [...]

Greetings from Egypt

I’m on a tourist ship floating down the Nile from Luxor to Aswan, and I am not alone. There are dozens of other ships with 150 tourists each from all over the world sharing the same experience at the same time.
The juxtaposition of the modern and the ancient is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. [...]