Our Beaches Are Taking a Beating

Are these the Southern California beaches pictured on the post cards, the ones that fill the family album, the ones where movie stars loll as clear and gentle waves blanket them? Even an ever-upbeat pop group like the Beach Boys would find little here to inspire song: After all, surfing safaris need open beaches.

In the past two weeks, parts of Southern California’s famous coastline have been at least temporarily shut down, closed to the public from Topanga to Laguna because of man-made spills of sewage and oil. In Orange County, Huntington Beach remains closed as oil spill cleanup operations continue. Then a sewage spill of nearly 8 million gallons closed 18 miles of beaches in Los Angeles County last weekend after the first major rainstorm of the season. Four miles remain closed.

For that spill, there is plenty of blame to go around: Los Angeles politicians in the 1970s were quick to approve major commercial and residential developments but failed to push for necessary bond issues that could have improved the overburdened sewage system before it became decrepit. Voters also failed to approve key bond issues when they were on the ballot. Finally, after a federal lawsuit against the city for its continued dumping of concentrated sewage into Santa Monica Bay--and after a series of spills--the city agreed to upgrade the deteriorating system. A line from Culver City to the Hyperion sewage treatment plant in El Segundo is under construction and will greatly increase capacity when completed in 1993.

But even when the new sewer line is completed, it will have no effect on the separate storm-drain system, which these days contains less and less water, and more and more litter. During the first big rain of the season, what flows through storm drains--and eventually onto the beach and into the ocean--is a river of oily water and trash. It includes all the cups drivers have tossed out car windows, all the gum wrappers pedestrians have carelessly tossed onto the sidewalk, all the fast-food junk improperly discarded. Los Angeles-area residents are said to throw away enough trash every five days to fill Dodger Stadium. We might all think about where that trash will end up the next time we complain about the sad state of Southern California’s beaches.