Jonathan Friedman, assistant editor, tells us that the Legacy Park project is to develop a park and, to avoid fines from the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, by reducing pollution of the city’s watershed. The Board’s website requires beach cities to abate excessive urban runoff of bacteria into Santa Monica Bay. “Excessive” and the types of bacteria are not defined.
There are 24 classes of bacteria, each having many subsets. There are typically 40 million bacterial cells in a gram of soil, a billion cells in a quart of fresh water and ten times as many bacterial cells as human cells in the human body. Bacteria is carried on human skin so swimmers must take care that none is shed which would pollute the ocean. Good bacteria recycles nutrients, eats sewage and aids in making cheese and yoghurt. Bad bacteria cause disease such as leprosy, bubonic plague and tuberculosis.
Somehow the Legacy Park project must separate the good and bad bacteria living in our 27 miles of watershed, directing the good into the ocean where it can do its cleansing and the bad into our public Legacy Park where it can infect us all with disease and at the cost of only $15 million. We must avoid fines from the Water Quality Board at any cost, including death.
Now the good news! The U.S. Census Bureau defines an urban area as having a population of 50,000 or more. Therefore Malibu, at 13,000, is not an urban area, so has no urban runoff, and therefore is not subject to urban runoff regulations by the Water Quality Board.
We therefore have no need for Legacy Parks water project which will save millions of dollars.
Coastal watersheds and bacteria have been around for billions of years and will, no doubt, be around for billions more, so if the Water Quality Board needs to fine someone they should go after Mother Nature.
Jack Singleton