Beach Report Card - California Coastkeeper Alliance

IntroductionHeal the Bay’s first Beach Report Card SM was published in 1990and covered about 60 monitoring locations in Los Angeles County, from Leo CarrilloBeach near the Ventura County line, south to Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro. At that time,beachgoers knew little about the health risks of swimming in polluted waters or the waterquality at any of their favorite beaches in Los Angeles County.Beach water quality was a public issue only when a substantial sewage spill occurred. Although beacheswere routinely monitored, the data were either inaccessible or unusable to the public. Since then, agreat deal of work has been completed to reduce urban runoff pollution and sewage spills at our localbeaches. Scientific studies such as the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project’s epidemiological study onswimmers at runoff polluted beaches and the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project’s (SC-CWRP) bight-wide shoreline bacteria and laboratory inter-calibration study have been completed. Legislation,such as the statewide beach bathing water standards and public notification bill (AB411), and theprotocol for identifying sources of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) at high-use beaches that are impactedby flowing storm drains (AB538) have been signed into law. Structural best management practices, suchas the Santa Monica Urban Runoff Recycling Facility, dry weather runoff diversions, and nearly $100million in California’s Clean Beach Initiative (CBI) projects throughout the state have been constructed.The city of Los Angeles is also spending more than $100 million of Proposition O funds to make SantaMonica Bay beaches cleaner and safer for public use. All the while, Heal the Bay’s Beach Report Card hasgrown in coverage, expanding from Los Angeles County to the entire western United States coastline.The 21st Annual Beach Report Card summarizes the results of beach water quality monitoring programdata from Washington through California. In this report, Oregon’s and Washington’s monitoring datafrom the dry weather summer swimming season (Memorial Day through Labor Day 2010) was used.[Due to Oregon and Washington’s infrequent winter monitoring, wet weather samples were not includedin this report.]California’s coastline was monitored from Humboldt County to San Diego County from April 2010through March 2011. This summary includes an analysis of water quality during four time periods: summerdry season (the months covered under AB411 [April – October]), winter dry weather (November2010–March 2011), year-round dry weather, and year-round wet weather conditions. In addition tosummarizing marine water quality, the report includes a brief review of the number of sewage spills thatimpacted ocean waters over the past year. The information derived from this analysis is used to developrecommendations for cleaning up problem beaches to make them safe for recreation.This year’s Annual Beach Report Card (BRC) covers nearly 600 locations for summer dry weather (324locations year-round) from Washington through California. Heal the Bay urges coastal beachgoers touse the information before they go to any beach on the West Coast in order to better protect their healthand the health of their families. The weekly BRC is available online at www.beachreportcard.org.15