Palos Verdes Beaches Make 2016 Honor Roll List Again!
Palos Verdes home owners can be proud that we have some of the cleanest beaches in California for our families to enjoy. On May 26, 2016, Heal the Bay reported that Palos Verdes beaches and coves are again in the current top Honor Roll 2015-2016 list for California. This means that our local waters have received grades of A+ & A+ throughout the year (summer and winter). Heal the Bay assigns weekly grades to more than 440 sites along the West Coast for summer dry-weather water quality and to another 60 locations that are on year round monitoring. Heal the Bay is a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to making Southern California coastal waters and watersheds safe, healthy and clean. They use science, education, community action and advocacy to pursue their mission.
Heal the Bay published their first Beach Report Card in 1990 that covered about 60 locations in Los Angeles County. At that time, beach goers knew little about the health risks of the water around them. Since that time, there has been a great deal more information to help keep pollution and sewage spills off our local beaches.
The Beach Report Card (BRC) is based on the routine monitoring of beaches by local health agencies. They collect water samples checking for bacteria that indicate pollution. The better the grade on the beach means the lower the risk of illness to beach goers.
The Beach Report Card program is funded from grants from different foundations. Volunteer groups such as Nothing’ But Sand, and Coastal Clean Ups are constantly needed to help ensure this program continues to minimize the pollution of our beaches. The largest Coastal Volunteer Day on the planet according to Heal the Bay, will be taking place on September 17, 2016, when other countries around the world will participate in cleaning their beaches and coastlines of unhealthy material. Our local organizations such as Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy and Los Serenos de Point Vicente also offer residents a chance to help clean our local beaches and funding is always welcome to help the organization pay for the monitoring of our beautiful beaches.
To read more about Heal the Bay’s Beach Report Card program click here.
To read my prior article on Heal the Bay beach report card click here.
Photo courtesy of Portuguese Bend Beach Club in Rancho Palos Verdes
