DOWNTOWN EDITION: Beach Water Grades Improve - Gazette Newspapers
Efforts to improve Long Beach's notoriously bad water quality may have started to bear fruit, experts say.
Heal the Bay released its summer season grades for water quality in California, and every beach tested in Long Beach either received an A or a B for the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
"They improved vastly in this report, so much so that it has been one of our highlights for this report," said Amanda Griesbach, Heal the Bay water quality scientist. "There was actually a 27% improvement over last year's report."
Beaches that showed the biggest improvement were at the Colorado Lagoon and west of the Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier.
Heal the Bay credited city management actions and citywide efforts to cleaning to water as having an impact, as well as a particularly dry summer season.
"A combination of projects appear to have Long Beach beaches moving in the right direction," Griesbach said.
Beaches west of the Belmont Pier have struggled with getting good grades (beaches east of the pier traditionally have received A and B grades for the summer) from the organization in the past. Private and city officials both have attributed those difficulties with how close those beaches are to the mouth of the Los Angeles River — the main source for water pollution in that area.
The city and the region as a whole have been working diligently with upstream communities to help combat all the trash and waste being put into the Los Angeles River, said Michael Johnson, support services manager for the city's Department of Health and Human Services.
"Trash in the water actually carries bacteria, so removing trash from the water is really beneficial to water quality," he said.
Efforts to help that situation led to the five beaches nearest to downtown increasing compliance with state contamination rules from 65% last year to 98% this year in a 30-day geometric mean sampling period.
Johnson said that about 15 cities upstream along the Los Angeles River had installed special trash catchers, and city officials hope that has had an impact on the water quality of the river as it empties into the ocean.
At the Colorado Lagoon, phase one of a project to clean it up was completed earlier this year, which may have led to its increase of compliance with state contamination rules from 45% last year to about 100% this year during the 30-day geometric mean sampling. Phase one included the removal of three feet of waste product from a culvert that connects the Colorado Lagoon to Marine Stadium as well as diverting or closing off 11 different storm drains that emptied into it. A massive dredging plan is scheduled for the area late this year.
"We think that is definitely contributing to the greatly improved water quality," Griesbach said.
Johnson there will be more projects to help Long Beach's historically difficult beaches to come, but officials are being cautiously optimistic that a lot of hard work and funding has finally made a difference.
For the complete report with individual beach grades, visit www.healthebay.org.
30 Sep, 2011--
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNF0MjB5QKml0XX_kZG39qJ1ElccGg&url=http://www.gazettes.com/news/environment/downtown-edition-beach-water-grades-improve/article_19360590-eae4-11e0-97ad-001cc4c002e0.html
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