Types of pollution and a clean-up plan are detailed in a list compiled by the state water board.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
In the ongoing effort to pinpoint the sources of contaminants polluting local waters and thereby cultivate workable plans to clean up the waterways, the State Water Resources Control Board has released a list of water bodies in California that do not meet quality standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Nearly every beach, creek and watershed in Malibu is named on the list.
According to the Clean Water Act of 1977, states are required to provide these lists to the EPA and develop methods to clean up pollution impairing the waters. This year, the compilation of data, called a 303(d) list, included 2,111 polluted water bodies in California.
While the number of contaminated waters on the list seems to be growing alarmingly each year, this is actually due to increasing expertise in identifying pollutants and their harmful effects, explained Tam M. Dudoc, chair of the SWRCB, in the report from the water board.
“This year, we have more complete and consistent information on more pollutants than ever before because science-based approaches allow us to do more and better testing, and to better determine our priorities for cleaning up the identified waterways,” Dudoc said in a press release from the SWRCB.
From Topanga County Beach all the way north to Broad Beach, Malibu waters are rife with contamination, including the pesticide DDT and PCB’s (polychlorinated biphenyls), which are evident at practically every beach on the list, to a concentration of algae, sulfates and sedimentation at Malibu Creek, and a pH imbalance and intestinal viruses at Malibu Lagoon.
For every identified location on the list, the water board names the pollutants present and the schedule for developing a clean-up plan, called a Total Maximum Daily Load. A TMDL establishes the maximum amount of a pollutant that can be discharged into that water body without exceeding water quality standards and specifies a timetable for a plan to reduce or eliminate the pollutant.
“The first real deadline to meet the state water board’s TMDLs passed in July,” said Mark Gold, executive director of Heal the Bay, the Santa Monica-based environmental watchdog agency. “Obviously, the standards weren’t met. Now it is up to the Regional Quality Control Board to determine a solid implementation plan, with established milestones and then, if necessary, a plan for enforcement.”
The city and the County of Los Angeles had announced in mid-October a joint effort to pinpoint the sources of pollution found in Malibu’s oceans waters, using DNA testing.
Gold noted that some of the local pollutant problem has been developing for years.
“The Santa Monica Bay is one of the worst DDT hot spots on the planet,” he said. “The Montrose Chemical Company discharged DDT into the L.A. County Sanitation System for 40 years. It’s in the groundwater.”
In Gold’s view, the biggest challenge facing the county is the contamination that comes from storm run off.
“Garbage, chemical fertilizers, air pollution from our transportation corridors, PCBs released by electrical transformers, even cigarette butts thrown into the street … all this ends up being washed into our groundwater when it rains or through irrigation. Nothing is done to trap it, yet the technology exists to do so.”
Heal the Bay has had some success in engineering a reversal of some of the damage caused by water-borne pollutants, including that caused by a local sewage treatment plant. Once the Hyperion Treatment Plant was upgraded, plant and animal life returned to previous “dead zones” in Santa Monica Bay.
“But ocean ‘dead zones’ are found across the world, from Chesapeake Bay to the middle of the Pacific,” Gold said. “Malibu Creek is a watershed on the brink of irreversible degradation and plans must be implemented now to stop run-off from fouling the creek.”
This does not mean, however, that local development must be curtailed, he emphasized.
“Currently, low-tech, affordable methods exist to trap run-off and divert it to treatment plants,” Gold said. “It is simply a question of builders and developers making it a part of the plan.”
The water board will submit its 303(d) list to the EPA within the next month for approval.
A complete list of water body ratings and TMDLs can be obtained at www.waterboards.ca.gov/tmdl/303d_lists2006.html