A Shameful Screw-Up

The L.A. Regional Water Board issued a shocking order Tuesday to allow the Kissel Co. to walk away nearly scot free despite its involvement in hundreds of water quality violations at Paradise Cove in Malibu over the past decade. Paradise Cove has long been one of the most polluted beaches in Santa Monica Bay. The [...]

Ground Control to Guy

Today’s guest blogger is Refugio Mata, Inland Outreach Coordinator at Heal the Bay
On the heel’s of NASA’s “bombing” of the moon, another event was beamed to earth from space. The two events had nothing to do with one another, but together they turned eyes heavenward.

Unhappy Labor Day

Jones: who had his back?

As if high unemployment, an economically depressed state and a shrunken stock market didn’t turn your Labor Day weekend into a downer, look no further than Saturday night’s resignation of Green Jobs icon Van Jones from President Obama’s Council on Environmental Quality.
Van is one of the most charismatic and outspoken speakers [...]

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, [...]

Gateway Garbage

Great news from last week.  The Obama administration awarded $10 million in stimulus funds to prevent trash from getting in to the Los Angeles River and San Pedro Bay.  The shocking pictures of Long Beach after a rain often show a few feet of trash piled along the shore.  The L.A. River is so polluted [...]

Chaos at Cabrillo

Inner Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro ends up getting Ds or Fs on Heal the Bay’s Annual Beach Report Card year after year.  Sometimes the beach even ends up on our Beach Bummer list, which ranks the 10 most polluted beaches in all of California. 
Over $10 million has been spent over the years on a [...]

Strange Adversaries

Yesterday, I went to the Blue Ribbon Task Force hearing on the latest controversy under the Southern California deliberations of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA). About 400 people attended the meeting at the LAX Airport Sheraton to battle it out on the issue of retaining a marine conservation proposal among the seven draft maps [...]

Oh Susana!

The old Rocketdyne Santa Susana Field Laboratory site in eastern Ventura County overlooking the San Fernando Valley has long been notorious for horrific pollution problems.  The hilltop site, located near residential communities, operated for over 60 years as a rocket testing site and hosted nearly 30,000 tests. It also operated as a nuclear reactor test [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]