Group targets sewer systems, runoff in ocean cleanup effort
Too often, ocean water is laced with sewage and pollutants, affecting how safe beaches are for swimming and surfing — that’s the message of this year’s Clean Water Report released Tuesday by the Surfrider Foundation.
“We believe the water should be clean, always,” San Clementebased Surfrider Foundation CEO Chad Nelsen said. “We should be able to do that in all but the most unusual circumstances.”
But instead, the report highlights inefficiencies in sewer infrastructure and a need to stop urban runoff before it reaches the coast, both main contributors to
dirty water that plagues the country's coastlines.
“We believe that we should have a zero tolerance for pollution in the ocean,” Nelsen said. “Our oceans are so vital to our economy, recreation, to our health, not to mention the marine ecosystems out there.”
Surfrider offers two solutions policymakers can focus on to keep oceans healthy: managing sewer infrastructure to make sure systems are up to date and doing a better job encouraging the use of landscapes that can soak in pollutants before they make it to waterways.
Despite the high value of clean beaches, coastal water quality is threatened by stormwater, urban and agricultural runoff, and sewage and industrial discharges, the report says.
Nearly 10 trillion gallons of untreated stormwater runoff flows into U.S. waterways every year, carrying along with it a “cocktail of pollutants, including road dust, oil, animal waste, fertilizers and other chemicals.”
Sewage spills and infrastructure failures release more than 900 billion gallons of untreated sewage into surface waters every year, the Surfrider report says, which can contain bacteria, viruses and parasites that make people sick with gastrointestinal symptoms, rashes, skin and eye infections and flu-like symptoms.
“Years of neglect have also left America's wastewater infrastructure in disrepair, outdated and failing,” the report says. “Sewage spills and failing wastewater infrastructure threaten coastal water quality by discharging raw and under-treated sewage into local waterways and the ocean.”
Orange County can be an example of how updating sewage systems pays off. According to a report released by the OC Health Care Agency earlier this month, fewer beach closures occurred because of sewage spills in 2020 than has typically been seen the past three decades. And the frequency of closures has been falling for several years.
Orange County is a good case study for the rest of the country, Nelsen said.
“If you invest in infrastructure, we can significantly reduce the number of spills,” he said. “Orange County is doing well and other places are really challenged by it.”
According to the OC Health Care Agency report, 88 sewage spills were reported in 2020. The 33-year average is 191 spills per year, and in 2019 there were 123. The peak of spills was in 2003 with 408, and there has been a steady decline since.
In 2020, only 2% of the spills reported required the ocean, harbors or bay waters to be closed; only twice was the ocean declared closed. The majority of sewage spills, about 62%, occurred because of a sewer line blockage.
One of Surfrider Foundation's key focuses this year is seeking money for local governments to upgrade their wastewater treatment systems through the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Water State Revolving Fund, a federal-state partnership that provides communities low-cost financing for a wide range of water quality infrastructure projects.
Testing the waters
Surfrider is also pushing for better water-quality monitoring programs, with more funding from the federal government to trickle down to coastal communities.
With more funding, water-quality tests can be done at more beaches throughout the region and with more timely results. Currently, it takes an estimated 24 hours to get test results back, though advancements such as rapid testing are in the works, Nelsen said.
“We know the water quality can vary by the hour and by the beach, by dozens of feet,” he said. “It would allow us to have more locations, more often and more times a year.”
In addition to government agencies that do testing at beaches, Surfrider has a Blue Water Task Force that goes out to take water samples around the country.
During 2020, 51 task force labs processed 5,796 water samples collected from 501 sampling sites; while the Blue Water Task Force collected fewer samples last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the program expanded by covering more beaches across the nation, the report says.
Ocean-friendly gardens
Another way to mitigate urban runoff flowing into the ocean is focusing on what's on land, the report says.
Kai Craig, a landscape professional who is part of the Long Beach chapter's Ocean Friendly Gardens program, was highlighted in the report.
Craig runs California Eco Design, which uses a “watershed-wise approach” to turn yards into “beautiful, functioning ecosystems” using drought-resistant plants rather than water-guzzling lawns.
Roofs, sidewalks, streets and parking lots — any man-made structures — are places where water flows and washes pet waste, oil and grease from cars, pesticides and other contaminants into the watershed, Nelsen said.
“It runs off into the beach,” he said. “It never touches the Earth. If we can create more permeable surfaces, we give the water the chance to absorb into the ground.”
When the runoff goes through vegetation, toxic chemicals are removed.
“That's why it's safe to surf at Trestles, and not the Newport river jetties,” Nelsen said. “One is the natural watershed, the other is urbanized.
“We're trying to build these little gardens to show, to demonstrate, how we can absorb the water,” he said. “If we did that on a landscape scale, we can knock off problems. Every parking lot can be designed to absorb the first inch of rain.”
An example can be found at the Crystal Cove Promenade, where, through advocacy by the nonprofit Orange County Coastkeepter and the city of Laguna Beach, there is a requirement that the parking area collects rainwater in a “landscape valley” before it hits the coast, Nelsen said.
“I think we should not build another parking lot or repave a street without building it so that it collects the first inch of rain,” Nelsen said. “It's a good example of what's possible. It's not intrusive; no one knows it's even there.”
Ultimately, it's about finding ways to keep human impact out of the ocean.
“If we did that every