Surfrider’s Malibu/West L.A. Chapter is holding November elections for committee members.
By Ben Marcus / Special to The Malibu Times
The Malibu/West Los Angeles Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation is holding elections in November, as many of the existing committee members are expected to step down this year. The Surfrider Foundation has long worked on quality of life issues along Malibu’s beaches and surf and is hoping to find dedicated, qualified individuals to continue to fight grass roots battles for clean water and clean beaches.
A cleaner Topanga lagoon, preserved tidepools, stricter record keeping for private coast golf courses and the civic effort to transform the Chili Cook Off property into Legacy Park all have roots that go back to 1984 when computer consultant Glenn Hening, environmentalist Tom Pratte and legendary surfer Lance Carson banded together to protect their beloved lineup.
“The issue then wasn’t water quality, but the destruction of wave quality by draining the lagoon straight into First Point [at Surfrider Beach],” Hening said. “But I didn’t name the organization after Surfrider Beach-I named it after the Surfrider Hotel in Santa Monica, the place where I first saw the Pacific Ocean when my family came out here in 1959.”
What was three guys defending their surf spot evolved into a loose affiliation of concerned surfers and ocean-lovers that catalyzed into chapters in 1991. Currently, the Surfrider Foundation has a membership of 50,000 in 80 chapters throughout the United States and worldwide.
There are 10 chapters alone in Southern California, which cover the coast from Point Conception to the Mexican border. The Malibu Chapter covers more than the name suggests, said Southern California Field Coordinator Nancy Hastings.
“The West L.A./Malibu chapter of Surfrider for a long time has been called the Malibu chapter, but it covers the coastline from County Line to Ballona Creek.”
Surfrider works in parallel with the environmental watchdog organization Heal the Bay, which was organized in 1985 when founder Dorothy Green rallied concerned citizens and went after the City of Los Angeles’ Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant, joining an Environmental Protection Agency lawsuit that resulted in a complete redesign of Hyperion into a cutting-edge treatment facility.
One of the Heal the Bay projects is a regular water quality report card for beaches within the Santa Monica Bay, and it was the regular “F” grades at Topanga that inspired one of the most successful battles by the Malibu/West L.A. Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. Concerned by those “F” grades at Topanga beginning in late 2004, members of the foundation discovered a Resource Conservation District report pointing to leaking septic systems, runoff from local business, and parking lots and illegal encampments along the creek as pollution sources.
In early 2006, Surfrider representatives met with State Park staff and learned that there were several dozen septic systems connected to abandoned homes that had been left behind unpumped. This was against local codes, but six months of prodding by Surfrider got no reaction from State Parks. In the summer of 2006, Surfrider gathered 200 names and began to organize a beach protest and press conference, and alerted the governor’s office about the problem, and the coming bad press.
The governor’s office responded quickly and lit a fire under State Parks, which then committed $100,000 to locate the abandoned septic systems. By September of this year, 21 septic systems had been located and removed. Beginning in the late summer of 2006, the water quality at Topanga Beach improved dramatically, getting an A grade 72 percent of the time, and an “F” grade only 4 percent of the time.
The Malibu/West L.A. Chapter will continue to make a difference, but a changing of the guard is coming with the November elections. Surfrider needs dedicated, qualified volunteers to fill a number of positions -including chair, vice chair, treasurer, volunteer coordinator and secretary-and also volunteers to contribute their skills in public relations, marketing, graphics, public speaking, marine biology, coastal policies, law and grassroots organizing.
Justin Mehren is the outgoing chair for the local chapter of Surfrider. “As chapter chair I learned the importance of patience and passion. To me those are the two most critical elements that a chair should bring to the chapter,” Mehren said. “The passion that I have for surfing has grown along with my passion for clean water and it is important to realize that just like surfing, it is not an overnight success. What has been accomplished in the last few years was only made possible because of the activists before us and we are setting the table for the activists to come.”
More information on the elections for Executive Committee members can be obtained online at www.surfrider.org/malibu.