November 1999 News
Chapter Formation:
The Long Beach Breakwater Task Force has passed a large milestone on its way to
becoming a full-fledged Surfrider Foundation chapter centered in Long Beach. This group is
now officially known as the Surfrider Foundation Long Beach Chapter Organizing Committee.
This 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. The last step is a vote by the Surfrider national board of directors in January.
If you are already a Surfrider Foundation member, look for our monthly newsletter in the
(snail)mail. Additionally, very soon, we will unveil our chapter website, which, of
course, will have a link to our breakwater site and links to and from 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.
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 first glance, this is alarming to us for two
reasons. 1) The area in the vicinity of Pier J 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. 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.
General Meeting, November 1:
A very special thank you goes to Captain Charles Moore of Algalita Marine Research
Foundation for being our guest speaker at our 1st –of-the-month general meeting.
Charlie gave a great presentation to us about his "MID PACIFIC TRASH MYSTERIES".
Recently, Charlie steered his research vessel into the middle of the ocean to a peculiar
spot where man-made trash and debris seems to have been collecting for who knows how long.
Charlie and his crew made observations, took samples and are sharing their findings with
researchers to try to understand where the trash is coming from, among other questions. He
gave an interesting talk, had plenty of bizarre trash samples to show us and answered a
host of questions from a large and interested audience. It was good to see several
students from the Los Alamitos High Marine Biology class make the special effort to
attend.
Volunteer Water Testing:
We are in our fifth 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 ekobayas@csulb.edu.
Water Quality Reporting:
The Long Beach Health Department continues to turn up foul results at a couple of
locations on our beach (at Molino & Granada Avenues and around Belmont Pier). Turning
the LBHD's data into a report-card type grade, these sights achieve "F's" far
too often. We must press to find out the source for these readings and make sure that our
city is doing their due diligence of finding the source for this pollution. The Colorado
Lagoon is also a chronic problem and is at least getting attention from the press and city
officials. Ideas for increasing circulation in the lagoon have been suggested and we, as a
Surfrider chapter, will evaluate these ideas and weigh in once we have the facts. 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. If you'd like to be a part of this effort, please contact the chairperson, Rob Russell at playalarga@aol.com. He can provide the meeting time and location information.