It's perfect beach weather this weekend, and all but a handful of southern California beaches received an A or B rating from healthebay.org, which rates beaches based on water quality every week.
Beaches that received an A+ include:
Seal Beach at 8th and 14th Streets;
Sunset Beach at Broadway;
HB at 17th, Beach, Brookhurst
and the Santa Ana River mouth;
Newport at 52nd, 43rd, 38th, 19th, 15th, 10th and the Wedge.
Beaches to AVOID!!
San Clemente Poche Beach (wherever that is), which received a big, fat F;
Seal Beach Pier, 100 yards downcoast, which received a C.
Overall, OC beaches are pretty clean. These two being the only exceptions to the As and Bs.
Los Angeles County beaches are a little worse, but still good overall, with 10 out of 90 receiving Ds or Fs.
It's very strange to me that Santa Monica Beach at the Wilshire storm drain gets an A+ and at the Pico/Kenter drain gets an A, but right in the middle at the pier it gets an F.
Why?
According to a KPCC article by Molly Peterson, the Natural Resources Defense Council, which works to protect the wild from us and us from the wild, found that 10 percent of beaches tested higher than allowed for levels of bacteria. Los Angeles County beaches doubled that. And about 20 percent of beaches violated standards for fecal coliform. Fecal coliform are bacteria found in feces that love salt water. Gross. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_coliforms)
According to KPCC (http://www.scpr.org/news/2009/07/29/nrdc-beaches/):
"NRDC researchers attributes about 9 percent of pollution to sewage and a smaller part to runoff. But it says there's more work to be done identifying the source of about 80 percent of beach-closing bacteria," Peterson wrote.
80 percent unknown...that's a lot.
Not that many people are peeing in the water. Even at the Santa Monica Pier.
But the NRDC admits the reason there are less beach closures is that there are fewer resources monitoring sewage spills.
Nice.
Before you head to the beach, check out the report card at http://www.healthebay.org/brcv2/ to be safe.
