Current News

January 2000 News

General Meeting, January 3:

A very special thank you to Surfrider Foundation's Executive Director, Chris Evans for speaking to our assembly. His enthusiasm and support for our efforts was very encouraging to the standing-room-only crowd.

January 12, Termino Drain/Colorado Lagoon Public Forum:

LA County Public Works engineers and local officials presided over a meeting with the neighborhood to discuss plans to upgrade the drainage system that empties into Colorado Lagoon. The meeting really degenerated into two camps: environmentalists concerned about the engineers conducting business as usual and just getting the runoff dumped into a body of water as quickly as possible versus irate homeowners who don’t want the project delayed for any reason. More meetings are promised to bring together these camps along with the local and county officials (who worry that the $10 million allocated for this project will disappear if the project encounters difficulty) to gain concensus. The officials are touting the idea that the project should proceed as designed while environmental troubleshooting is done to determine the cause of pollution in Colorado Lagoon. Our position is that a win-win scenario is available if the engineers and the local officials would employ BMP’s (best management practices) to reduce urban runoff at every opportunity as opposed to their brute force, harmful approach.

January 20, Meeting with Ray Grabinski:

Three of our members of the political education subcommittee held a meeting with the city council member that was expected to last only half an hour. With much respectful exchange of ideas and comments, an hour and a half flew by. Mr. Grabinski is aware of our efforts and is most encouraging with ideas as to how we can move the campaign forward. We look forward to productive follow-ups with him on these ideas.

January 29, Chapter Formation:

The Surfrider Foundation national board of directors held its meeting in San Clemente and unanimously voted in favor of our graduation into a full-fledged chapter. Our group is now officially known as the Surfrider Foundation Long Beach Chapter. This designation will allow those volunteers who focus on the breakwater to continue this pursuit, but will also allow us to allocate attention and resources to several related Long Beach watershed issues such as the LA River outfall, Colorado Lagoon water quality 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 February, 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 seventh 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.