Press Article

San Diego Union-Tribune
Oct 17, 1997

Taking a Stand Against Pollution

By Terry Rodgers
STAFF WRITER 

     Donna Frye, a local surf shop proprietor whose tireless efforts to curb ocean pollution have gained national attention, is going tandem with an unlikely partner.

     Frye, who's usually making waves with local politicians, has formed an unprecedented alliance with public health officials to help track down sources of ocean pollution.

     Surfers, divers and swimmers who suspect they have gotten sick from contaminated water will soon be able to document the event by filling out a county-approved questionnaire at beach-front businesses.

     "We want to know where people think they're getting sick when they've been in the ocean, and then, if there are clusters of events, we can go upstream and investigate," said Cathy Stone, an official with the county Department of Environmental Health.

     The questionnaires eventually will be distributed at local surfing shops, other beach-front businesses and possibly San Diego city lifeguard stations.

     "We're trying to get people involved in the pollution prevention process," said Frye, 45, founder of Surfers Tired of Pollution.

     Harry's Sutf Shop in Pacific Beach, where Frye often holds court and persuades the apathetic to get involve#, will be the first business to make the survey forms available to the public.

     Frye, who speaks in a gravelly voice deepened by puffs from a cigarette, jokingly calls herself a "reluctant capitalist" who seems to spend more time registering surfers to vote and lobbying on the telephone than she does taking orders for custom surfboards.

     She is well-connected in the cliquish world of the surf industry, and many famous surfers worldwide visit the shop.

     "All roads lead to Harry's," said Frye.

     She became motivated as an activist, she said, after her husband, Skip Frye, a renowned surfboard shaper, kept getting sick from surfing near their home in La Jolla.

     Her efforts broke into the national limelight last year when she publicly ridiculed surferCongressman Brian Bilbray, R-Imperial Beach, for voting for legislation that, had it passed, would have weakened the federal Clean Water Act.

     Until recently, Frye displayed a papier-mache representation of the congressman's head emerging from a toilet at her shop.

     Frye has partially reconciled with Bilbray, who is sponsoring national legislation to standardize water testing,

     Said Gary Sirota, president of the national Surfrider Foundation, "I have tremendous respect for Donna Frye as a leader and an individual who backs up statements with action and supports her assertions with fact."

     While she doesn't surf anymore herself, Frye was instrumental in prompting county officials to permanently post warning signs at dozens of coastal storm drain outlets that tests proved to contain contaminated water.

     When trying to get reluctant public officials to act, Frye, who hold a bachelor's degree in business, frequently quotes tourism bureau statistics showing that spending by overnight visitors to San Diego County rose to $4 billion in 1996.

     "Those tourists aren't coming here to look at the architecture," she said. "They're coming here because of the water, so we darn well better ensure that it's clean."

     The longtime environmental activist spearheaded the conception of AB 411, the so-called "Right to Know Bill," sponsored by Assemblyman Howard Wayne, D-San Diego.

     The legislation, which was signed last week by Gov. Pete Wilson, requires coastal counties to conduct weekly testing between April and October of bacteria levels along their most heavily used beaches.

     Frye said the county's new effort to document water-related illness represents an unusual partnership between a public agency and a grass-roots environmental organization.

     She said she proposed the idea of surveying beachgoers because she's grown weary of listening to local surfers grouse about their water-related illnesses.

     Fall and winter typically are the most hazardous periods for surfers and swimmers because rains flush toxic runoff directly into the ocean.

     "Instead of merely coming in and complaining, this will be an opportunity for us to educate the public about how to avoid getting sick the next time," Frye said. "A lot of people don't know that the storm drain system isn't connected to the sewer system."

     The county is relying on Frye to recruit and train beach-front businesses to help people fill out the questionnaires.

     "We want to make sure that people who come in with a hangover don't blame it on the water," she said. "We'd like it to be as scientific as possible."

     Public health officials suspect that cases of human illness related to water pollution are grossly underreported.

     "Most of the time, the people that surf, when they get sick, they don't pick up the phone and call us," said Cathy Stone, who investigates such reports for the county.

     The county typically receives only 30 telephone reports annually from people who suspect they have gotten ill from contact with contaminated water, Stone said.

     When the reports are received in a timely fashion, investigators take samples of the suspect waters to determine if the bacteria level exceeds public health standards.

     The new survey system being implemented here falls short of being a valid scientific method for linking pollution to human illness, county health officials acknowledged.

     The model for conducting such an empirical study was achieved last year by scientists at the University of Southern California who tracked the health of more than 15,000 people who frequented beaches along Santa Monica Bay.

     The study concluded that those who swam or surfed near storm drain outlets were 50 percent more likely to contract colds, sore throats and other illnesses than those who took dips in cleaner waters farther from the sources of urban runoff.