According to environmental non-profit organization Heal the Bay’s 2022-2023 Annual Beach & River Report, both Santa Monica Pier and Playa Blanca, on the southern city limits of Tijuana, tied for the top spot as both faced significant water quality challenges.
A crowd of reporters, photographers and television news crews gathered on the beach, just north of the Pier as the team from Heal the Bay, together with members of the Water Resources Management Team from the City of Santa Monica, gave a presentation and took questions.
"We are fortunate to have beaches that are beautiful and clean most days of the year, but unfortunately, there are times and conditions when the water at the beach makes folks sick," said Tracy Quinn, President and CEO of Heal the Bay. "The fact is, our coastal waters are regularly contaminated with pollutants such as chemicals, trash and fecal matter, which are harmful to human health and the ocean ecosystem.
"To help maintain public safety, Heal the Bay created the Beach Report, which provides weekly and annual water quality grades based on bacterial pollution of more than 700 beaches from the state of Washington down to Tijuana, Mexico."
California beaches were impacted by 50 percent more precipitation during recent winter months than the last 10 years, along with an alarming 45 million gallons of sewage spilled, negatively affecting water quality along coastal waterways. While overall quality remains very good in dry weather, Bean Hollow State Beach in San Mateo County and the Point Loma Lighthouse in San Diego County were the only two beaches listed on the 2022-2023 Honor Roll, which shockingly was down from 50 in 2021.
Consequently, because of the significant amounts of rainfall, the Honor Roll was the shortest this past year than it has ever been.
This is the 33rd year that the annual report has been published, assigning "A-to-F" letter grades for 700 beaches from Washington State to Tijuana, Mexico – including 500 California beaches in the 2022-2023 report – based on levels of fecal-indicator bacterial pollution in the ocean measured by County health agencies.
The good news is 95 percent of the California beaches assessed in the report received an A or B grade during the summer of 2022 which is on par with the average. Even so, scientists remain deeply concerned about ocean water quality. Polluted waters pose a significant health risk to millions of people in California.
People who come in contact with water with a C grade or lower are at a greater risk of contracting illnesses such as stomach flu, ear infections, upper respiratory infections, and rashes. Beaches and rivers usually have poor water quality following a rain event. Less rain typically means that reduced amounts of pollutants, including bacteria, are flushed through storm drains and rivers into the ocean. Sewage spills pose increased health risks and trigger immediate beach closures, which should be heeded until public officials clear the area.
Lest we forget when an estimated 250,000 gallons of sewage spilled into the Los Angeles River and out into the waters of San Pedro Bay in April prompting beach closures up and down the Westside. Then only a week ago, 50,000 gallons of sewage once again resulted in the closure of Long Beach to swimmers and during the pandemic, in January 2021, when an anchored cargo ship snagged an offshore pipeline resulting in 25,000 gallons of crude oil spilling into the waters near Huntington Beach.
"This past year was really bad from that perspective. There were a few events of seven to 10 million gallons spilling into the ocean across the state and those are the result of major infrastructure failures," Luke Ginger, Environmental Scientist at Heal the Bay, said.
"There was one a few years ago in the Tijuana area, where over a million gallons of raw sewage was discharged into the waters there [in February 2017]. So what’s really needed there is investment. Probably at the federal level, we need funding for infrastructure, inspections, infrastructure repairs. Because a lot of those big spills are due to deteriorating infrastructure that just wasn’t maintained properly."
According to Ginger, the City of Santa Monica has invested a lot in improving water quality. "They are capturing all of the runoff that was a big pollutant source for a long time. And now they’re addressing the bird netting under the pier that has kind of deteriorated over time. So we’re hopeful that it can improve. We see many piers across the state that have pretty good water quality, so I don’t see why this one can’t as well."
Santa Monica’s state of the art Sustainable Water Infrastructure Project (SWIP), while promising to significantly increase the City’s capacity to capture and reuse water, is still awaiting official activation with no timeline in place as testing and inspection continues.
"We’re hoping that it’ll be in full production mode by the end of June or early summer," said Sunny Wang, Water Resources Manager for the City of Santa Monica. "We’re still going into the final testing phase of the regulator, given the first of its kind nature of these projects, there’s just a lot of testing. Even the results from DDW [Division of Drinking Water] require further scrutiny before they’re comfortable enough to give us the okay to send that water in the system."
The public can check out the updated water quality of their local freshwater recreation areas at healthebay.org/riverreportcard and ocean beaches at beachreportcard.org or by downloading the app on their smartphone.
