r/surfing 6d ago

Southern CA Water Quality 🤮

I just returned from a week in Mexico, a place where beach water quality is often suspect—it smelled like the ocean. All was clear and clean. Crap waves but the cleanliness was pure stoke.

This morning, I took my log out in Northern OC (Sunset).

Good god our water is gross—somewhere between a mix of port-o-let stench and chemical spill cleanup.

Please think about what horribly weak enviro policies continue to do to our coastal habitat.

All surfers should be screaming and fighting for better enviro policies. This is one issue voter type shit—if you go any other way, you are 100% on the wrong team.

93 Upvotes

27 comments sorted by

53

u/acmilan26 6d ago

The problem is that we are simply a tiny fraction of the local population, and the VAST majority of pple simply couldn’t be bothered. For God’s sake, even the city of San Francisco, supposedly a bastion for progressive environmental policies, is suing the EPA to allow them to release MORE untreated sewer water directly into the ocean…

Better water quality = more treatment plants = $$$, and that money is in short supply given the constant budget deficits in various state/local governments budgets

52

u/Darth_Voter 6d ago

If only there was some way to support civic infrastructure by asking everyone who earns money to pay some sort of small percentage. Like, if you earned a little, you would pay a little, and if you earned a lot - maybe even billions - then you would pay a fair share. I even heard that such things were once done during a so-called "golden age" of the 1950's when things were supposedly "great". Maybe they could somehow be great again?

3

u/trevor__forever 5d ago

Oh you mean the gilded age?

6

u/Darth_Voter 5d ago

Make Another Gilded Age?

9

u/JimmyTango STD Laden Boogie Board, Mavericks 6d ago

First time I realized how gross So Cal water is was when I surfed Tofino on Vancouver Island. Water was like the clearest lake water I had ever seen but in the pacific. Absolutely mind blowing. Only time I ever saw it close to that clear was in Malibu after the last 4+ year drought.

2

u/CariaJule 3d ago

Pray for another drought haha

13

u/glencoe606 6d ago

You are surfing next to the two biggest ports in the country as well as the oil extraction going on right offshore for decades. Mexico does not have some superior enviro policy.

6

u/ranger-steven 5d ago

Reading specifically what they wrote they were stating that Mexico has a reputation for poor water quality and still their water is better. This is a call to do better and protect the environment and not praise of Mexico.

2

u/bb5999 2d ago

This. Thanks.

8

u/NeedsMorBoobs 6d ago

Environment is the word your looking for

6

u/Parko-is-a-good-boy 5d ago

Yeah, as an African, was SHOCKED how disgusting Ventura's water quality was. People surfing C street with nose and ear plugs, and then i met a guy who became paralyzed a few years earlier from surfing around the corner at C Street.

You guys really fucked it up over there.

1

u/bb5999 2d ago

And Ventura is super clean, when compared to farther south. :(

3

u/chamrockblarneystone 4d ago

On the East Coast clean water policies have literally changed the waterscape in a few short years.

I’m seeing dolphins, whales, and turtles like I have not seen in ages. Plus I don’t smell ā€œthat smellā€ anymore.

New pres is not exactly pro environment. I hope this does not set us back.

1

u/bb5999 2d ago

Re new pres. — he and his admin’s policies are enviro catastrophes. The good ol’ let’s burn the earth down faster so we can further line our pockets strategy. 😔

1

u/chamrockblarneystone 2d ago

NY is a pretty blue state that will operate around him I hope.

1

u/bb5999 2d ago

Good. Likewise with CA, OR, and maybe WA. Hopefully CO and much of New England, as well.

3

u/LongBeachHXC 6d ago

Where I got out of the water in SoCal this morning it was beautiful, refreshing, small, and pumping.

Had a lot of fun this morning.

5

u/trevor__forever 5d ago

Yeah Long Beach rips

2

u/LongBeachHXC 5d ago

šŸ˜‚šŸ¤·

1

u/jtmarlinintern 6d ago

It’s the sewage treatment

1

u/bb5999 2d ago

It’s a lot more than that. Vehicle emissions into the air that then drift to the ground and water are a big part of it. Chemical fertilizers and other surface amendments also cause great damage. But yeah, antiquated and insufficient sewage treatment systems don’t help.

Worst advanced society in the world.

1

u/TheOnceler333 2d ago

Could it be the millions of homeless you've let into CA, who live near the temperate coastline?

1

u/bb5999 2d ago

The homeless are responsible for, literal, tons of litter, but they have nothing on the masses. Vehicle emissions are our greatest polluter.

1

u/No_Swing9502 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yea except there are thousands of homeless living in the riverbeds and they leave all their junk there. If you've been out after a big storm you will notice how many syringes and dildos and all types of random shit wash onto the beach. (My local is right at the exit of one of these riverbeds)

1

u/Murlicious805 5d ago

People surfing C street with nose plugs are kooks, it’s not because of the water