Surfers and out-of-town swimmers brave the ocean waters despite the warnings of high bacteria levels due to recent stormwater runoff.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
The gully washer Los Angeles received from last week’s storm resulted in another health advisory from the county Department of Public Health. Lifeguards posted water quality warnings on all beaches last Wednesday, which were to stay in effect until at least New Year’s Eve.
The L.A. County Department of Public Health regularly posts health advisories after large amounts of rainfall, all of which affect Malibu beaches. Recent water quality grades here have ranged from “C” to “F.”
The problem arises when heavy rainfall carries urban runoff into storm drains, creeks and rivers, which then enters the ocean. The high levels of bacteria coming from the collected runoff can cause infections and illnesses.
Malibu beaches and waterways have long been plagued with the effects of storm water runoff and continual breaches of storm drains, so much so that the city is working with state and county agencies to try and determine the sources of and solutions to the contamination by, among other techniques, testing DNA found in local waters.
Captain Brent Katzer of the Zuma Beach Lifeguard Headquarters said that elevated bacteria in the waters at all Malibu beaches have been a problem for some time, “especially the watersheds of Zuma Creek, Trancas Creek and Malibu Creek.”
The city of Malibu recently purchased the formerly Malibu Bay Co.-owned land known as the Chili Cook-Off site, now known as Legacy Park, with the intent of building a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plant to help stem the deleterious effects of storm water runoff into Malibu’s ocean waters.
City Manager Jim Thorsen said “Legacy Park is a leading-edge project that will be able to treat 1,400 gallons of storm water per minute. This will go a long way to cleaning up our Civic Center and protecting our water sources.”
The city is also working with the Chamber of Commerce to promote sustainable business practices in Malibu with bans on smoking at the beach, recommendations to eliminate expanded polystyrene products at restaurants, replacing the bridge at Solstice Creek to make it more “environmentally friendly” and using a $1 million grant awarded by the Los Angeles County Regional Water Quality Control Board to devise methods to restrict dry-weather runoff.
“I’ve been in local government for 22 years now,” Thorsen said, “and, in Malibu, we have a city council more committed to addressing environmental issues than I’ve ever seen.”
Swimmers brave tainted waters
The health advisories and occasional beach closures from the county have done little to stem local surfers from hitting the water when a swell is up, and the waters north of the Malibu Pier at Surfrider Beach are normally crowded with surfers, despite the posted warnings.
One local teenage resident was not worried about the possible hazards presented by storm runoff into the ocean. “Oh, yeah. They always have that sign up. Nobody pays any attention to it.”
He declined to give his name, saying, “My mom is into the Baykeeper, so she wouldn’t want to see my name in the paper.”
The Santa Monica Baykeeper is a public advocacy and watchdog group that monitors local water quality.
Lifeguard Captain Katzer said, “We post the warnings, but we can’t make people stay out of the water.”
When asked why swimmers would enter the ocean despite the high bacteria risk, Katzer speculated that not all of the beach crowd was local.
“A lot of the people here now are vacationers,” he said. “Someone from Michigan has traveled all the way here and they are going in the water no matter what, and they are OK with it being cold and maybe unhealthy.”
The public warnings seemed unnecessary last Thursday, when strong, 40-mph offshore winds were battering the beach and the temperature was low in the 60s. Katzer said there was only a small crowd at the beach Saturday morning and that the tourist crowds were smaller than usual at Zuma during the three-day weekend, “because the surf is small and most of them are at the Rose Bowl anyway. But we do have some people come up and ask about the advisories. Usually they are someone from the middle of the country who can’t believe that the famous Malibu beaches have water quality problems.”