Press Article

La Jolla Light
March 2, 2000

What We Swim In

By Dave Schwab

     What's in the water? Haven't you ever wondered? Or, maybe you'd lust rather not think about it.

     In any event, what's in the water we drink, irrigate with, use to wash our cars and swim and recreate in does effect us.

     Moreover, it is we who are mostly to blame for "muddying" our precious water resources.

     Fortunately, for our own sake, the quality of our water is also something we also have a great deal of control over.

     Donna Frye, founder of Surfers Tired of Pollution (STOP), an environmental watchdog group, has an easy way of summing up how people should view their relationship to their water resources: "Don't put anything in the storm drain you wouldn't want to swim in," she concluded.

     What is in the ocean water off our coast is something that will scare you. "Just from urban (storm drain) runoff, you're going to have very high levels of pesticides, heavy metals from automobiles -- oil and grease, things like that," pointed out Frye. "You're also going to see solvents, like paint thinner, and sedimentary dirt carried down from construction sites. There's also bacteria, viruses, parasites."

     Thanks in large measure to the legislative efforts of Assemblyman Howard Wayne and passage of his bill, AB 411, in July 1999, there is now standardized testing of ocean water along the San Diego coastline.

     "We along with the cities do bacterial monitoring, and the sewage treatment plant (in Point Loma) does a considerable amount of bacterial monitoring, said Chris Gonaver, division chief of the county Department of Environmental Health. "We (county) have a program that routinely monitors the coastline, on a weekly basis,      April through October. We have regulations that prescribe the (pollution) levels that cannot be exceeded." Gonaver said the government during testing looks for groups of "indicator" bacterial organisms, mostly fecal contaminants from the intestinal tracts of warm-blooded animals, which signal rising' pollution levels and possible danger to humans.

     But, for the most part, San Diegans should feel safe swimming along the coast, assured Gonaver.

     "Our water quality, for the most part, is very good here in Southern California," he said. "People should feel comfortable when it's not raining, that if signs are not posted on the beach -- it's safe to swim. On the rare occasions when the beaches are posted -- we recommend that people pay attention."

Gonaver warned that an especially dangerous time to swim is with the "first flush," immediately following a storm event, when it hasn't rained for awhile and contaminants have had time to build up before being carried into storm drains.

     "We recommend that people not swim near flowing storm drains or river mouths or open lagoons until 72 hours after a rainfall," he added.

     Unfortunately, the problem with water pollution is only likely to worsen for the foreseeable future as more and more people move to San Diego County to take advantage of the climate.

     As with most things, where it comes to water quality, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Frye believes people have a choice where water pollution is concerned. We the people can police ourselves. Or, we can pass government regulations to force us to police ourselves.

     "It's kind of a double-edged sword," noted Frye. "You're going to have more people, so you're just going to have to put in mandatory regulations. "If people won't do it voluntarily -- then they have to be regulated."

     What could happen is for citizens and developers to voluntarily address the issues of water pollution: find ways to divert water runoff, treat it, clean it, recycle and reuse it, instead of allowing it to just be dumped in the storm drain, as we're mostly doing now.

     "Right now, we're an end-of-the-pipeline solution," admitted Frye. "It's cheaper to clean up your mess, or stop the mess in the first place, than it is to clean it up after you've created it."

     Frye added San Diego's stormwater diversion system, as it presently exists, is a stop-gap solution to the water-pollution problem.

     "It doesn't work with the large flows during rainfall, only in dry weather," stated Frye. "When people look at diversion as the ultimate solution, they think they don't have to take anymore responsibility. What I'd like to see is people take responsibility for preventing the pollution from getting down (to the ocean) in the first place."

     The new objective, believes Frye, should be for people to think of rainwater as an invaluable resource.

     Said Frye: "We have all this rain, we ought to be figuring out how to capitalize on some of it, reuse and recycle it to our lawns and actually use it as a benefit, rather than saying it's just something that should be diverted."

     On the plus side, the extent of the water pollution problem is being noticed -- and dealt with -- by local government. The city of San Diego this past year put $732,000 in the city's budget to add staff and beef up its water pollution prevention program. "San Diego's storm drain diversion is actually pretty far ahead of some cities," noted Frye. "At least, we've put in some structural controls. We need to challenge the construction industry, give them some incentives to start looking into new technologies, take the lead on some of this (water treatment), rather than waiting for us (citizens)."

     Failure to deal now with San Diego's water pollution problems could spell cataclysm down the road, warned Frye. "Some day, we're going to run out of water if we continue on the path we're heading," she concluded.