Verifying what most already know, the beaches in the southland are pretty rank.
An excerpt.
L.A. County beaches ranked foulest in state
Heal the Bay's summer report card shows new trouble in Long Beach but some improvements elsewhere along the California coast.
By J. Michael KennedyTimes Staff WriterOctober 25, 2006
Los Angeles County predictably earned the dubious honor Tuesday of having the most polluted beaches in California.
Less predictably, Long Beach jumped out as the worst offender among the worst.
But having made those pronouncements, Heal the Bay, the environmental group that routinely conducts pollution studies along the California coast, declared this one a victory of sorts. The reason: a number of the usual cellar-dwellers passed with flying colors because of recent cleanup efforts.
Mark Gold, the executive director of the Santa Monica-based Heal the Bay, pointed to such perennial polluters as Will Rogers State Beach as examples of cleanup efforts along the coast that were starting to yield results.
"It was always one of the worst offenders," Gold said of Will Rogers, which earned an A rating in the organization's annual "End of Summer Beach Report Card."
The study, which grades more than 450 California beaches, bases its findings on levels of bacterial pollution in the water. Los Angeles County received a grade of F for 29 of its 97 testing stations. San Diego County was next with three F readings, while Orange County had one. There were 37 F ratings in the entire state, compared with 278 monitoring stations that received A ratings.
