The Marie Canyon storm drain at Puerco Beach is the only Malibu location not to receive an A or A+ in Heal the Bay’s Summer Beach Report Card. A dry weather runoff treatment facility has been installed to curb the pollution.
By Jonathan Friedman / Assistant Editor
Water quality was up this summer at Malibu’s beaches. But the improvement had more to do with the dry weather than any man-made adjustments, according to Heal the Bay, the environmental watchdog group that released its annual Summer Beach Report Card last week.
“Our theory is that the extreme drought was making it so that there was a lack of urban runoff,” Mike Grimmer, Heal the Bay’s environmental data analyst, said.
The report card assigned letter grades to beach locations throughout California based on levels of bacteria measured from May 26 to Sept. 3. The amount of trash or toxins in the water was not taken into consideration. Last year, five of the 18 measured Malibu locations received F’s. This year, all but one earned an A or A+.
“It’s really comparing apples and oranges,” Grimmer said. “Last year was more of a normal year. This year was the driest year since they began measuring rainfall 150 years ago.”
The lone location still receiving an F was at the Marie Canyon storm drain at Puerco Beach. Heal the Bay named that area the third most polluted in the state in its annual report card released in May. The pollution, Heal the Bay President Mark Gold told The Malibu Times then, is due to over irrigation in the subwatershed of the area. The county installed a dry weather runoff treatment facility at the site last month, and Grimmer said the area has not exceeded state bacteria standards since that time.
Although the dry weather makes it difficult to make any meaningful comparison of this year’s report card with previous ones, the data are not completely useless.
“It shows how urban runoff is probably the biggest influence on poor water quality,” Grimmer said. “It is a bigger problem than sewage spills or other things like that.”
For the same reason it improved in Malibu, water quality was up throughout the Santa Monica Bay and statewide. Sixty-two of the 67 monitored locations (93 percent) in the Santa Monica Bay received A’s or B’s. Last year, only 75 percent of the locations earned those grades. The locations not receiving high marks were the Castlerock storm drain at Castlerock Beach (C), Will Rogers State Beach at the Temescal Storm Drain (F), Santa Monica Pier (F), Dockweiler State Beach at Ballona Creek Mouth (F) and harborside at Cabrillo Beach at the lifeguard tower (F). The beach at the Santa Monica Pier had the second most polluted water in the state.
Heal the Bay releases a weekly Ocean Report Card. The Malibu area grades appear on page A3 of The Malibu Times.