Do you like being pooped on? Well I don’t and neither do my friends at Malibu Surfrider Beach. Yet we’re being pooped on daily, all year around.
Yeah, the warning signs are out there, but do the visitors read them, do the 3- and 4-year-old children that play in the lagoon and shore, and do the lifeguards keep every individual out of that poopy water? No! Excuse me, but my friends and me are being violated daily at the world famous Malibu Surfrider Beach. Excuse me if I have an edge, but if you were being violated wouldn’t you.
Do you think poop rolls downhill? Yes, it does, and not only the surfers and beach visitors (to the tune of approximately 3000 per day during the summer months) are in the way but so is the rest of the Malibu community. Not only is the environmentally offensive poop coming from irresponsible development, but also so is the traffic.
Malibu Surfrider Beach became the premier surfing spot in Southern California because of its exceptional wave shape and length of ride. It is the place kids dream of surfing. In Southern California most waves last around 10 seconds a ride. Malibu Surfrider’s wave can last up to a minute long. Malibu Surfrider beach and Lagoon State Park is a natural treasure. It is in the center of Malibu and represents Malibu’s best environmental character and all its best qualities, sans the pollution (which is fixable!).
Surfing is synonymous with Malibu. Surfing is a holistic sport. It mirrors the best qualities of the good old U.S.A. It’s about challenging the frontier. It’s about individuality. It’s about independence. It’s about imagination, discipline and craftsmanship. It’s about respect for one’s self. It’s about the environment.
The mouth of the Malibu Canyon, known as the “Civic Center” area, is all prehistorically a wetland area as identified in the recent UCLA study. What part does the wetland play in the ecosystem? Wetlands function as a kidney does, in the human body, for the watershed. The wetland cleanses the water coming down the storm drain of the watershed, before that water enters the ocean.
I have been involved in the watershed effort to solve the pollution problems at Malibu Surfrider Beach since 1992. Recently I asked to move the meetings into Malibu so that Malibu can participate in this community effort. It is essential that the Malibu community participate because the Malibu Wetland belongs to the Malibu Creek Watershed Ecosystem, and because irresponsible developers are exerting an enormous amount of influence on the powers that be to irresponsibly develop the area into a commercial venture.
Also, Los Angeles County is still trying to exert its influence by promoting their infamous treatment plant with a outfall pipe 400 yards offshore to discharge waste. Here’s another pipe, with no guarantees that it won’t break down, using our ocean as a waste bin again. The watershed ecosystem affects this entire community and everyone should participate in the effort because the solution to these problems here will determine how clean an environment our kids will have to pass on to their kids.
How much wetland is needed to cleanse the volume of creek water coming down the creek nowadays? Good question. The UCLA study, just coming out, does not deliver the answer. Why? Good question. Do you care? Or does the Bay Company convince you that their offer of baseball fields and soccer fields should give them the right to develop their land (our wetland) the way they choose regardless of the environmental impact. This very transparent ploy to engage kids as a PR device so that they can meet their bottom line is deceitful.
I am for responsible development. I am for baseball fields and soccer fields in the wetland area because they allow for the wetland to function.
What I am against is the Malibu Bay Company using kids, and using the community dollars to fix their (drainage) problems from the Malibu Colony shopping center. What I am against is Jeff Jennings willfully lying, and I have documentation to prove this. What I am against is the added 30,000 cars that the proposed 1997 1.1 million feet of Civic Center Village development was planning on bringing to the already crowded PCH (according to Caltrans). What I am against is the irresponsible behavior of those moms that have bought into this poopy PR story.
Bob Purvey