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BREAKWATER BREAKDOWN

Jennifer StockdaleWed. August 15
 

Marine layer

While the Long Beach City Manager’s office was snail-mailing a “notice of funding” letter to the Army Corps of Engineers requesting a reconnaissance study of the Breakwater, another alarming ocean water-quality report seemed to emphasize the need for such a study. Tests by the National Resources Defense Council found that Long Beach has five of the six most-contaminated beaches in Los Angeles County, echoing a May report by Heal the Bay that rated local waters the worst in California.

Despite the urgent reminder from Mother Nature, the Port of Long Beach Harbor Commission’s Monday agenda did not include an item on partially funding the recon study, although Commission President Mario Cordero signaled that it would. Due to a scheduling conflict, the afternoon meeting was moved to a morning time slot and the subject was bumped, possibly until early September.

The procedure for undertaking such a reconnaissance study is a bureaucratic marine layer. Apparently, determining the cost-effectiveness of reconfiguring a miles-long wall of wave-blocking boulders isn’t done every day.

Eighth District Councilwoman Rae Gabelich says the study will consider four components—ecosystem restoration, flood storm protection, navigable waters, and ports and coastal protection—but noted that the city, despite its $100,000 contribution to fully fund the study, must adhere to the Corps of Engineers’ strict standards.

What are those standards? In addition to promising the money, that’s what the August letter from the city manager’s office wanted to know. It asked the Corps to flesh out specific regulations of the study and to identify the kind of documentation that might be needed from the city to proceed.

Perhaps complicating things a bit is the fact that the city manager’s office—which is assigned to handle Breakwater correspondence—hasn’t had a permanent city manager since the end of May. Police Chief Anthony W. Batts is serving on an interim basis while the council interviews candidates. Meanwhile, Deputy City Manager Reginald Harrison (who oversees the Parks, Recreation, and Marine Department, among others) is handling Breakwater issues.

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COMMENTS

  1. 1

    The contention that the breakwater is related to these water-quality problems is false. As Heal The Bay said in its own report:

    “Long Beach has traditionally fared well in the Beach Report Card despite the fact its beaches are completely enclosed by a breakwater. Typically, beaches located inside a breakwall are more prone to poor water quality than open ocean beaches, but this has not been an issue for Long Beach except at Colorado Lagoon.”

    If the breakwater were the issue, water-quality problems would not be just now arriving.

    I don’t have any idea where beaches “B-69″ and “B-70″ are, but the rest of the beaches listed in the NRDC report are in Alamitos Bay or Colorado Lagoon. As there is no breakwater in front of the Alamitos Bay opening, knocking it down is not going to fix the water there.

    The problem of Colorado Lagoon, located at the far end of Alamitos Bay and separated from tidal flow by Marina Park, is particularly intractable.

    [report]

    Posted By grendl2000 on August 16th, 2007 at 4:30 pm

     

  2. 2

    Thank you for your response. I really do appreciate your feedback.
    I do understand your concern with proposing solutions to water quality problems without first addressing the problems.

    I disagree with you, however, that the breakwater and Long Beach’s water quality issues are unrelated.

    It’s true that the two reports described in the opening of this column (NRDC and Heal the Bay’s Annual Report Card) have linked certain water quality issues to local sump-pump overflows (at places like Colorado Lagoon and Mothers Beach) and not directly to the breakwater.

    However, both reports listed numerous other beaches in Long Beach with equally inadequate pollution marks, besides those of Colorado Lagoon and Alamitos Bay.

    It should also be noted that both of these reports concentrate only on bacteria counts in the water (and not other toxins like PCB, DDT and mercury — all of which were found in abundance in Long Beach’s coastal waters in a 1998 Harvard thesis presentation by Kalon Morris ((which directly involved the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers))).

    I agree that it was perhaps misleading to associate the sump pump bacterial component with the breakwater. I apologize for any misunderstanding.

    However, it is a sound assertion of science that the breakwater mitigates wave action and water circulation within San Pedro Bay (that was the intent back in the 40s when the breakwater was completed for the U.S. Pacific Fleet).

    Now, the water in San Pedro Bay gets very little circulation and receives more than its fair share of pollution from cities north of us, based on the geographic layout of two major rivers– our polluting bookends.

    Since so few of those toxins are adequately flushed from the water by natural wave circulation and long shore current, and so many more pollutants arrive on a daily basis, many of them (including bacteria) continue to reside in the ocean sediment.

    Passing or failing grades aside, Long Beach has serious water quality problems (in addition to high bacteria counts) that need to be addressed.

    I don’t, however, want insinuate that providing a means to further-pollute the open ocean is an answer either.

    The breakwater water may not be “the issue,” for in a region this complex, there is no solitary issue; every component is interrelated and no variable is independent.

    Further, it’s an illusion that water quality problems are now just arriving; they’ve been regenerating for nearly 60 years in Long Beach.

    Perhaps a necessary question to ask is, “Do you swim in the coastal waters of Long Beach?” and “If not, why?”

    You’re right. Simply reconfiguring a rock wall will not fix water quality problems. But provoking discussion on the subject — constructive discussion that will implement progress — is what I was aiming for with this column.

    Thank you again and if you have any questions, I’d love to hear from you.

    [report]

    Posted By Jenny Stockdale on August 29th, 2007 at 11:47 am

     

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