Ocean Pollution

I know that in the past your newspaper has published many articles on the water pollution problem off our Southern California coast. However, I don't believe that enough emphasis is being placed on the seriousness of the problem. If you were to ask the average person to name California's top five problems, the water pollution problem would most certainly not be among those listed. I have personally suffered from the polluted coastal waters and thus have seen the severity of the problem firsthand.

For much of the summer, the towering creation stood hidden behind a draping of blue and black tarps, looking like nothing more than a big home construction project. On Thursday, workers stripped away the shrouds to reveal a startling, four-story-high art installation. Surrounded by homes in a quiet pocket of Santa Monica, the display consists of a series of 150 square panels spray-painted yellow-orange, magenta, purple, sky blue and sea foam green. Each panel also bears a series of unidentifiable, white-painted characters that seem like a message scrawled by extraterrestrials.

State and federal attorneys on Thursday asked a federal judge to restore an ocean pollution claim filed last June against eight companies and the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. U.S. District Judge A. Andrew Hauk dismissed the claim last week, saying it failed to detail the damage done by DDT and PCB pollutants from Montrose Chemical Corp., Westinghouse Electric Corp. and the other defendants.

Eleven storm drains empty into Colorado Lagoon in Long Beach, and its only outlet to the sea -- a 900-foot underground culvert -- is choked with mussels, clams, sand and barnacles. So it's no surprise that one of Southern California's only lagoons -- shallow saltwater bodies sheltered from the ocean -- is among the dirtiest around. Last year, Colorado Lagoon was ranked as the state's fourth most-polluted beach in Heal the Bay's "Beach Bummers" list. Yet the Y-shaped basin is one of the most popular swimming spots in the city, packed with sunbathers and swimmers on hot summer afternoons.

Immediately eliminate pollution along the nation's shores or risk permanent danger to human and marine life, an environmental group urged the federal government. The Natural Resources Defense Council unveiled its program to address short-term health threats within five years, and maintain the long-term health of coastal waters within 10 years.

Ocean contamination off the Palos Verdes Peninsula will be discussed by marine toxicologist David Brown at a free public meeting sponsored by Heal the Bay, a nonprofit volunteer coalition, tonight at 7 at the Peninsula Center Library, 650 Deep Valley Drive, Rolling Hills Estates. The organization is concerned about pollution contaminating coastal waters that affects commercial fishing and recreational diving.

Four bills by Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) aimed at protecting Santa Monica Bay and other waterways from pollution cleared their first legislative hurdles this week. The key measure--which for the first time establishes a state policy to curb ocean dumping--was approved on Monday by the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee by an 8-3 margin and sent to the Ways and Means Committee.

Four bills by Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) aimed at protecting Santa Monica Bay and other waterways from pollution cleared their first legislative hurdles this week. The key measure--which for the first time establishes a state policy to curb ocean dumping--was approved on Monday by the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee by an 8-3 margin and sent to the Ways and Means Committee.

Moving to heed state law and protect public health, county administrators on Monday recommended that the county begin closely monitoring ocean pollution and posting signs on public beaches after major sewage spills. The Ventura County Board of Supervisors is expected to authorize money today to upgrade the environmental health program that in recent years has failed to inform the public when ocean waters are too polluted to enter.

A U.N. conference neared completion Wednesday of an agreement intended to sharply curtail the number of chemicals polluting the world's oceans. With two days left in a two-week meeting, delegates said they were almost certain to set in motion a plan that would culminate in a 1997 conference to draw up restrictions on such chemicals as dioxin and DDT.

Crews are working to clean up an oil spill that dumped an estimated 672 gallons of crude oil last week into a Huntington Beach flood-control channel that drains to wetlands and the Pacific Ocean, authorities said Wednesday. After getting reports of a petroleum odor Jan. 21, Orange County public works crews a day later discovered the spill in the Huntington Beach Channel east of Beach Boulevard and south of Adams Avenue, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "There was oil all the way across the channel from wall to wall," said Robert Wise, the EPA's on-scene coordinator.

It can be hard to find what you're looking for in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But scientists on an August research cruise had no problem tracking down their subject. "We did observe a lot of plastic out there in the ocean about 1,000 miles from anything," said Miriam Goldstein, chief scientist on the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition. "It's pretty shocking." A group of doctoral students and research volunteers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and Project Kaisei spent nearly three weeks on the research vessel New Horizon taking samples and exploring the plastic garbage patch floating in the North Pacific.

With the world's oceans facing mounting threats from pollution, climate change and overfishing, the Obama administration on Friday held the first of several public hearings intended to help it draft a coordinated policy for managing the health of the seas. During their stop in Alaska, members of the White House's Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force said they expected to have a list of priorities for improving ocean stewardship in place by mid-September. By December, officials said, they planned to set out a broad strategy for sustainably allocating natural resources among interests such as fishing, oil and gas development, shipping, wind and tidal energy, boating and wildlife preservation.

Just off downtown Long Beach, where freighters queue up to unload much of the nation's imported goods, a long wall of rock rises from the waves, encrusted with mussels and crawling with crabs. This is the Long Beach breakwater, a 2.2-mile vestige of World War II designed to shield the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet from stormy seas and enemy torpedoes.

A mixture of oil and water leaking from an ExxonMobil platform has spread across a mile of ocean off the Southern California coast, federal and state officials said. Initial reports indicated the leak came from a deck drainage tank where rainwater, lubricants and fluids drain into a sump unit, said Coast Guard spokeswoman Stephanie Young. She said the company reported the leak Monday and was still working to stop the mixture from seeping into the Santa Barbara Channel. It was unclear how much oil -- which Young described as a light lubricant, not crude oil -- had spilled.

Facing forecasts of wet weather that could flush tons of urban trash out to sea and onto local beaches, Los Angeles County authorities scrambled Thursday to reinstall a boom across the outlet of the Los Angeles River to keep debris out of Long Beach Harbor. The boom had been decommissioned Monday because the county Department of Public Works ran out of money to keep it operating.

A recent surf session with Pierce Flynn and Ed Mazzarella reminded me of the eclectic nature of surfers. Both work for the San Clemente-based Surfrider Foundation. As Surfrider spokesman, Flynn tells us who's responsible for ocean pollution, while Mazzarella links the foundation with its chapters, letting them know what to do. I told Rockin' Fig I was going surfing with two guys I hadn't surfed with before, and he was stoked.

Researchers say baby striped bass in the San Francisco Estuary are contaminated with toxic chemicals, pesticides and flame retardants before birth. Scientists at UC Davis say mother fish acquire the pollutants from estuary waters and their offspring have underdeveloped brains, have dysfunctional livers and grow more slowly than offspring of fish grown in clean-water hatcheries. Researcher David Ostrach says the findings are troubling because the estuary -- which includes the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay -- provides water for two-thirds of the state's population and most of its farms.

West Coast governors urged the federal government Tuesday to keep new oil drilling rigs out of their waters and to spend more money on programs to restore the health of the Pacific Ocean. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, joined with Democratic Govs. Ted Kulongoski of Oregon and Chris Gregoire of Washington to reaffirm their opposition to opening undersea oil fields to new drilling, as part of an elaborate action plan for preserving coastal waters.