WATER QUALITY
Why is water quality important?
About half of our world’s population lives within coastal areas. Much of our beautiful developed coastlines are covered in dense communities covered in hardscapes, which are streets, sidewalks, and cement, producing one of the biggest problems for water quality along our coasts, urban runoff. Urban run off is water that flows over these hardscapes and drains straight in to our bays, rivers, and beaches. These storm water irrigation channels carry all types of nasty pollutants such as Oil, Grease, pesticides, metals, bacteria, viruses, and even toxic chemicals that eventually run straight into our ocean.
These pollutants cause poor water quality up and down our coast. Poor water quality at our beaches threatens the health of beach goers and surfers, and could result in chronic illness and even death. These nasty pollutants become built up in inner city areas and after rain mostly get pumped out into our beaches with no treatment. These poor water quality conditions contribute to pollution that ends up in our waves and on our beaches. Usually a 72-hour advisory after a heavy rain to deter beach gores from polluted waters.
About half of our world’s population lives within coastal areas. Much of our beautiful developed coastlines are covered in dense communities covered in hardscapes, which are streets, sidewalks, and cement, producing one of the biggest problems for water quality along our coasts, urban runoff. Urban run off is water that flows over these hardscapes and drains straight in to our bays, rivers, and beaches. These storm water irrigation channels carry all types of nasty pollutants such as Oil, Grease, pesticides, metals, bacteria, viruses, and even toxic chemicals that eventually run straight into our ocean.
These pollutants cause poor water quality up and down our coast. Poor water quality at our beaches threatens the health of beach goers and surfers, and could result in chronic illness and even death. These nasty pollutants become built up in inner city areas and after rain mostly get pumped out into our beaches with no treatment. These poor water quality conditions contribute to pollution that ends up in our waves and on our beaches. Usually a 72-hour advisory after a heavy rain to deter beach gores from polluted waters.
For surfers and ocean enthusiasts this becomes an especially hard dilemma because most beaches aren’t posted with environmental warnings or reports, which means its up to us to call. Most the time we are cognizant about these dangerous effects of getting in the water due to something we call the “Big Flush”. The flush represents all the pollutants that have built up in the inner city areas and near drainage deposit sites that with the first heavy rains of the years get flushed out into our beaches and coast. Some of these areas near these drainage deposits are obviously the most hazardous and will receive the notices of high bacteria levels and pollution. The tricky pat about the issue though is the fact that urban run off happens along our coasts everyday rain or no rain which is why it is important to know where these pollutant are effecting and how they are effected our coastlines.