Noticed in The Malibu Times on Jan. 15, caption: “Bagging sand against the tide”-that SWPPP (EPA stormwater vests on workers) were piling sandbags onto Broad Beach to prevent loss of houses. Again, about half of them are plastic ones, which float out to sea, unravel, and endanger/kill creatures that eat them.
I thought Malibu had stopped using these as a policy after I photographed, dug up, emptied 50 a day (only within a 1/2 mile from my house, as I couldn’t manage more than that). I finally delivered about two dozen to the city government offices, encrusted with muscle shells, seaweed, algae (that’s how long they’d been sitting in the tidal pools amongst the rocks), in various states of shred and unravel…
Is there any way we can stop County of Los Angeles, California Beaches, or whomever officiates at these events (it looks from the front page photo as though it’s several agencies) from using them near the sea? It seems counterproductive, to say the least, to use something that will not stay in place to “protect” structures or even land.
I’m copying to the EPA as it was their vests identified by the photographer.
Beate Nilsen