December 1999 News
Belmont Shore Xmas Parade, December 4:
About a dozen of us Surfrider/Breakwater Task Force volunteers gathered around a
Surfrider banner and had quite a good time sharing treats and taking in the sights and
sounds. In addition to being eco-warriors, we like to have a good time, too.
General Meeting, December 6:
A very special thank you to Bruce Monroe and Phil Lohman from the Sierra Club and the
Los Cerritos Wetlands Task Force. They both presented a lively, multi-faceted overview of
the efforts to save the wetlands and made it not only interesting, but made it quite
relevant to our groups’ special interests. Bruce Monroe then went on to explain some
of the future plans that the Sierra Club has for creating a marine protected area in the
San Pedro Bay area and how that idea could dovetail with our breakwater campaign.
City Council Meeting, December 14 (Carnival Cruise Lines):
Developers are in the late stages of negotiations to steal the cruise ship from the Port of LA over to the Queen Mary complex. At the council meeting, the politicians were falling all over themselves to congratulate the city manager for his negotiations. Three Surfrider Foundation members went to the podium to express skepticism that the plan was fully thought out. The proposed docking area is in the vicinity of Pier J which has a history of costly surge problems (any wave action causes the boat to slam into the dock causing damage to both or creating high costs to employ tug boats to pull the ship a small distance from the dock while it’s still tied to the pier). These problems have historically been dealt with by building yet more breakwaters and groins, which we have more than enough of already. Furthermore, our campaign to reconfigure the breakwater may be in direct conflict with their new desire to locate in an area that would be exposed to semi-open ocean swells. 2) On the whole, the cruise ship business is a "dirty" industry. These floating cities have habitually dumped their waste in our oceans, both in accordance with the law and in defiance of environmental laws. We reviewed the recent “60 Minutes” expose on the cruise ship industry at our last executive meeting and their activities are worthy of suspicion. Our own Long Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau warned city officials that this type of business would not generate much in the way of taxes—this is because the cruise lines fly a “flag of convenience” (usually Liberian, not the American flag) to weasel out from paying taxes and abiding by pesky regulations. Unfortunately, we were in the minority with these opinions.
Chapter Formation:
We’ve gone through all but one more hurdle on the way to becoming a full-fledged
Surfrider Foundation chapter centered in Long Beach--a vote from the Surfrider Board of
Directors in January. Until then, our group is officially known as the Surfrider
Foundation Long Beach Chapter Organizing Committee. Chapter formation will allow those
volunteers who focus on the breakwater to continue this pursuit, but will also provide
attention to several related Long Beach watershed issues such as the LA River outfall,
Colorado Lagoon and conservation of the Los Cerritos Wetlands among other issues. If you
are already a Surfrider Foundation member, look for our monthly newsletter in the
(snail)mail. Additionally, in late January, we will unveil our chapter website, which, of
course, will be fully-linked to our breakwater site and to the Surfrider national site.
Participation in the LB Breakwater Task Force has always and will continue to be a
grass-roots movement--you do not need to be a Surfrider member to be active and effective.
However, we encourage your interest in joining us and becoming caretakers of the coast. At
your request, we can send you literature describing our parent organization, Surfrider
Foundation, which also has a membership application attached.
Volunteer Water Testing:
We are in our sixth month of regularly-scheduled testing at designated locations. The
testing we are doing is important because the health department testing is solely focused
on sewage/bacteria. We are attempting to gauge the larger picture of the health of our
body of water. We do this by conducting chemical analysis. For instance, we are testing
parameters such as pH, salinity, dissolved oxygen, ammonia nitrate and phenol presence. As
a Surfrider chapter, we will pursue widening this testing effort by involving local high
schools. If you'd like to get involved, we could use your technical or administrative
help. Please email Emiko at xtremesun@yahoo.com.
Water Quality Reporting:
The Long Beach Health Department continues to turn up foul results at a couple of
locations on our beach. Turning the LBHD's data into a report-card type grade, our beach
achieves "F's" far too often. We need extra volunteers to help us track these
problem areas and to work along with the city’s health department to troubleshoot the
cause of these problems. You can find the latest easy-to-understand report card of water
health (relevant to bacteria) at Health the Bay's website at http://www.healthebay.org/baymap/.
DREAM CLEAN 2000:
This is a new project we are starting that will be an art contest open to kids in the
Long Beach school system from K-12 and college. The assignment will be to envision our
beach, the LA River or the Los Cerritos Wetlands as a restored/revitalized eco-system and
to document that vision in their own artful way. We will sponsor exhibitions of the
artwork and involve celebrities and officials in the judging. If you'd like to get help
with the planning, please contact Diana at (562) 433-4323 or at DianaMann@aol.com.
Political Education Subcommittee:
This group continues its work to systematically meet with all the elected officials who represent our area and who may play a role in the reconfiguration of the breakwater. It is the responsibility of this committee to develop a dialogue with these officials, educate them on our complete proposal and provide them with any information they may need to come to a decision on the issue. We have meetings being scheduled with council members for the beginning of the new year. If you'd like to be a part of this effort, please contact the chairperson, Rob Russell at playalarga@aol.com.