Pollution in the bay

Pollution is a word that is synonymous with Los Angeles. From our brilliant brown skyline to our traffic-choked freeways, most people have come to associate our city with some form of nasty pollution. As a surfer and a diver, I have seen what Los Angeles County’s 5,000-mile storm drain system is capable of emptying into the Pacific Ocean, and trust me, it isn’t pretty. I have seen everything from beer cans, to tires, to clothes and yes, even a condom or two. Once, and I am still not sure how it got there, I had the distinct pleasure of swimming next to a headless chicken. For a while, I thought she might have died trying to escape from a KFC cargo ship, but alas, I will never know.

I thought I had seen it all, but during a recent surf session at El Porto Beach, I saw something that sparked my curiosity. It was a package floating in the water, and upon closer inspection, it turned out to be package of kitchen gloves – from Korea. Had that little piece of trash really floated across the entire Pacific Ocean? Or did a Korean fisherman get careless when he was doing the dishes? Either way, it reminded me once again that our oceans have been considered by many to be one giant refuse pile. In fact, according to the Surfrider Foundation, in some areas of the Pacific, plastic particles outnumber plankton by six to one.

How does this trash get in the ocean? Well, most of it comes from storm drains that are clogged with trash and organic waste. According to the L.A. County Department of Public Works, Los Angeles water treatment plants generally treat and clean 100 million gallons of contaminated water and debris each day from storm drains. But when it rains, the county’s storm drains can generate close to 10 billion gallons of polluted water, and most of the time the city’s treatment plants can’t handle the additional load. For instance, each month, it is estimated that one million cigarette butts are dropped on the ground, and each one of those will most likely end up in a storm drain, and later on, in the ocean. In fact, as of 2009, according to Heal the Bay (an organization that works for clean water), Los Angeles County has the worst water quality of any county in the state of California.

In addition, it was recently stated by Heal the Bay that the Scattergood and El Segundo power plants, which are adjacent to El Porto and are located only 15 minutes from LMU, are negatively affecting the surrounding waters. In order to keep their machinery from overheating, the power plants use a process known as OTC (once-through cooling). The plants suck in cold seawater to cool their equipment, and then expel the hot water into the nearby ocean. An unfortunate amount of animals tend to get sucked up into the plant (as of yet, no surfers have been sucked in), and the water that is expelled is believed to negatively affect the local ecosystem by raising the average ocean temperature.

The call for environmental concern has become particularly strong in these recent years, especially here on campus. However, the need to save polar bears and prevent global warming may seem rather distant to our everyday life here at LMU. Yet, if a student really wants to take time out of their day to enact environmental change, there is much that can be done to benefit the greatest natural resource closest to our campus: the Pacific Ocean. By doing something as simple as picking up your trash, you are preventing further pollution to our oceans, and thus saving some hapless surfer from sharing his surf session with the remnants of someone’s lunch – or afternoon delight.