During a Cinco de Mayo Beach Ball party at a private Malibu home this Saturday, the city of Santa Monica, local resident Gil Segal and the Evan Frankel Foundation will receive recognition for their push to clean up Malibu’s environment, including its beaches and Santa Monica Bay.
Record producer David Foster — who is hosting the party with his wife, lyricist Linda Thompson — will perform music with Kenny G. and Cher. About 350 guests are expected to attend the event, packaged as having musical entertainment, a silent auction, food, drinks and humor to benefit Santa Monica BayKeeper, a local environmental watchdog.
“It’s just such a worthy cause. We try to open up our home to fundraisers as often as we can,” said Thompson, adding that she and Foster are hosting four separate fundraisers at their home this weekend.
“It behooves the foundations who are trying to save money. They can share costs,” she said.
Thompson has sat on the BayKeeper’s board since 1999. “I got involved with BayKeepers because I love the ocean and I’ve lived in Malibu for 21 years,” said Thompson. “It just seems sinful that we’ve allowed the water to become so polluted.”
Segal, former president of the Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy and a CPA and attorney in the entertainment industry, has lived in Malibu for 22 years. He served as the Santa Monica BayKeeper’s president from 1996 to 2000, and will be honored at the event with the Frank Wells Founder Award. The Baykeeper’s projects are effective, he said, because “you’ve got to get somebody’s attention by rattling the legal courts’ attention.”
He agreed with Thompson that Surfrider Beach, along with Malibu’s creek and lagoon, are polluted.
Surfrider Beach consistently earns an F-level rating, he said. Up until his recent move to Pacific Palisades, he lived on the water and swam in the ocean daily.
“The urban pollution has created a problem. Development will only add to the problem,” said Segal.
“Gil’s a strong proponent of water quality and the environment in general,” said Steve Fleischi, Santa Monica BayKeeper’s executive director.
Santa Monica BayKeeper employs five staff members at its Marina Del Rey office but has a network of 1,000 members and 100 committed volunteers. Volunteers take water samples from pipes that appear to be discharging in watersheds between Palos Verdes and the Ventura County coastline.
The organization’s motto is “to protect and restore Santa Monica Bay, San Pedro Bay and adjacent coastal waters.”
In 1998, Santa Monica BayKeeper filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles alleging 20,000 violations of the Clean Water Act, and penalties of $500 million. Then, on Jan. 8, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sued L.A. “for its continuing violations of federal law resulting from sewage spills to local rivers and beaches.”
A disastrous and local example, said Fleischi, is the trash pile-up in the L.A. River. Santa Monica BayKeeper has also sued industrial facilities for Clean Water Act violations along the L.A. River.
Another ongoing Santa Monica BayKeeper project is kelp reforestation. A team of volunteer divers helps the organization. Kelp is grown on strips of bathroom tile and then transplanted to spots on the ocean floor.
Aside from Segal, the city of Santa Monica will receive the Keeper Award and the Evan Frankel Foundation, the Circle Award, “for their outstanding water-quality and environmental quality efforts,” said Fleischi.
Foster and Thompson have lived in Malibu since 1980.
“The great thing about Malibu is that there’s an incredibly strong sense of community that’s tough to find anywhere in America, much less the L.A. area,” said Thompson. “You know your local grocer, you know your pharmacist, your restaurateur … that kind of spirit is pervasive in Malibu.”
“We have a responsibility. The world is waking up to the reality. It seems to be happening – there’s a consciousness being created,” said Segal.
But, he said, “If we don’t pay attention to it, we’re going to leave a very polluted place for our grandchildren.”