Overall, local beaches get high marks for water quality during dry weather. However, bacterial contamination continues to plague beaches during wet weather.
By P.G. O’Malley/Special to The Malibu Times
Heal the Bay issued its annual beach report May 21 and for the first time, Malibu’s Surfrider Beach got a passing grade-an A for last summer. However, during the rest of the dry days and during the wet season, contamination earned the world-class surfing beach another F.
Likewise, other Malibu beaches got high marks for dry days, particularly the stretch of beach from Leo Carrillo east to Westward Beach, which had “great water quality for beachgoers,” according to Heal the Bay.
“We’re all excited about the A,” said Malibu’s Mayor Pro Tem Sharon Barovsky. “It shows our efforts are paying off.”
The environmental organization’s rating scale, which ranges from A to F, is based on daily and weekly fecal bacterial pollution levels in the surf zone. Water samples are analyzed for bacteria that indicate pollution from numerous sources, including fecal waste. The higher the grade a beach receives the lower the risk of illness for ocean users.
Heal the Bay Staff Scientist Mitzy Taggart says Surfrider’s summer A rating relates directly to the closure of the berm that separates contaminated water in Malibu Lagoon from the ocean. The fact the berm remained closed most of last summer is a function of low water flows in Malibu Creek.
“The primary source of contamination of Surfrider Beach is the lagoon,” Taggart said. “And last winter was dry, so the berm built up earlier and wasn’t breached often last summer. When the berm’s in place, the water quality at Surfrider Beach is very good.”
For what’s contaminating the lagoon Taggart recommends looking upstream-although not too far. Taggart says her organization considers Civic Center septic systems a source of bacteria based in part on the 1999 Woodward-Clyde study, which established a hydraulic connection between area ground water and the lagoon, and the fact that septic tanks are a source of the human viruses that typically make people sick. Farther upstream Taggart points to the Tapia wastewater reclamation facility, not as a source of bacteria, but because its discharge can increase flow in the creek on dry days and may contribute to breaching the lagoon berm.
“This isn’t the case during the winter,” Taggart said, “because there’s so much other water coming down the creek that Tapia’s discharge doesn’t make a difference.”
Dr. Randall Orton, conservation manager for the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, agrees up to a point.
“We have five years of empirical data that shows Tapia stops discharging long before the background water levels in the creek are low enough to allow the berm to form,” Orton said, who added that in the six years the facility has been prohibited from discharging reclaimed water into the creek from April 15 to November 15, the berm has typically remained open after the facility stopped discharging.
“Like everyone else, we’re concerned about the water quality in the Bay,” Orton said. “But under the terms of our Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board permit, Tapia doesn’t discharge for seven months. Despite this, the berm often remains open in the summer, depending on spring rains.”
Both Barovsky and Taggart agreed one of the reasons Surfrider regularly gets an F on wet sampling days is runoff from the upper watershed, including stormwater from the inland communities of Agoura Hills and Calabasas.
“The more that gets paved over in these communities, the worse the situation will be downstream,” Taggart said. “The more surface that gets paved over, the more water runs off and eventually ends up in the lagoon.”
Barovsky said Malibu is working with upstream communities to help control the urban contamination that comes down Malibu Creek in stormwater flows. The same dynamic affects all Malibu beaches, from Leo Carrillo to Big Rock; all had good marks in the summer and failing grades on wet days, typical of most of L.A. County where only 10 percent of the beaches got a C or lower in summer. Surfrider’s total dry day F put the beach in the company of other “Beach Bummer” locations including Cabrillo Beach inside L.A. Harbor. The report also indicates the water quality was better at the north end of Surfrider near the Malibu Colony fence and farther east at the Malibu Pier; both areas got a total dry day rating of B.
“The thing that pleases me the most,” Barovsky said, “is that we’re doing outreach. Malibu can’t do this alone. We’re too small and we don’t have enough money.”