Save the date and mark your calendars! We have reserved the Coral Casino for the evening of Saturday, October 16th for another memorable Heal the Ocean benefit. Here is a quick glimpse at what Heal the Ocean has lined up for 2010:
February – Release of Ocean Wastewater Discharge in the State of California Report & Inventory
March – Annual Newsletter Release
April 17-18th – Earth Day Booth
August 16th-27th – HTO Flags on State Street
August – Moms in Motion Wine Trail Fundraiser
October 9th – Harbor Festival Booth
October 9th – 6th Annual Coral Casino Benefit
Enjoy a slideshow of over 100 photos of the 2009 Heal the Ocean Benefit Concert.
This event featured guest speakers Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jean-Michel Cousteau & Hillary Hauser. Fine artist Matthew McAvene provided us his Fabulous Fish Puppet Show.
The 5th Annual Heal the Ocean Benefit was a huge success! The Santa Barbara Newspress covered the event (Read the article here). Enjoy a few photos by Branden Aroyen from the evening and we will soon post a full report…
Beautiful Table Settings
Auction Items including a Hillary Hauser painting
Ed Mercadillo, Jacob Tell, Marlo Tell, Val Aroyan & Branden Aroyan
State Street will become a sea of blue, when Heal the Ocean’s flags fly from August 14-28, 2009! The happy dolphins on the HTO flag are one of the State Street Flag Program’s most popular images. They represent the joyful feelings of Heal the Ocean, too, in that the organization is celebrating its 11thanniversary on August 19 with a fund-raising dinner at Piatti, Montecito.
HTO is also commemorating the beginning (in July 2009) of construction for the South Coast Beach Communities septic-to-sewer project, which will remove septic systems from Rincon, Sandyland, Sand Point and Padaro Lane - seven miles of beaches on the south coast. The organization is also celebrating the recent release of the CEQA document necessary for the upgrade of the Goleta Sanitary District to full secondary treatment, a case HTO won with the help of its 3,000 supporters.
Heal the Ocean is now organizing a working group of scientists and engineers that will address the issue of full reclamation of wastewater.
Hillary Hauser and Santa Barbara attorney Jeffrey Young co-founded Heal the Ocean on August 19, 1998 after Hauser’s editorial in the Santa Barbara News-Press sparked a public protest over closed beaches in Santa Barbara. The organization has since affected ocean policy not only in Santa Barbara but the state of California - and even across the nation.
Heal the Ocean’s annual Benefit Concert, to be held this year on September 26, 2009 at the Biltmore’s Coral Casino La Pacifica Room will feature the U.S. west coast premiere of The Black Seeds, a rock/reggae group from New Zealand, and Culver City Dub Collective will also be performing. For more information, and to join, visit HTO’s website http://www.healtheocean.org.
Carpinteria Sanitary District issues Notice to Proceed.
During its July 7, 2007 board meeting, the Carpinteria Sanitary District OK’d Penfield & Smith’s design/construction plan for the South Coast Beach Communities (Rincon) Septic to Sewer Project, and Notice to Proceed was issued Wednesday, July 8, 2009.
Heal the Ocean is looking forward to the on-line publishing of the U.S. Geological Survey’s final report, “Sources of Fecal Indicator Bacteria in Urban Streams and Ocean Beaches, Santa Barbara, California,” which is currently going through final scientific review before being published by USGS in the on-line Journal of Annals of Environmental Science.
Heal the Ocean participated with the city of Santa Barbara in the three-year investigation by the USGS to study the possibility or likelihood of groundwater transport of human pollutants (septic and/or sewage waste) to the ocean. We were able to contribute over $60,000 to the study due to generous multi-year grants from an anonymous Orange County foundation.
When the USGS report is published, HTO will provide a link on our website.
Some conclusions from the study:
Point sources dominated FIB contamination to streams during baseflow (non-rain), and non-point sources dominated FIB contamination to stream during stormflow (rain);
In most areas FIB concentrations in shallow ground water were low, suggesting leakage from sewer lines and laterals connecting sewer lines to residences;
Ground water flow at West Beach was toward a regional sewer line, which acted as a drain;
Sewage from the sewer could not move toward the beachfront and ground water discharge at the beachfront was small;
Discharge from nearby streams also contributed FIB to West Beach, especially after stormflow.
As a result of the USGS study, the city of Santa Barbara has taken proactive measures by connecting the Haley Street storm drain to the city’s El Estero wastewater plant, and also sleeving the sewer main along the Cabrillo Blvd. waterfront.
Young people seeking to fill community service hours requirements are invited to become a HTO Storm Trooper!
It’s very simple: you take a camera and go on a survey of storm drains and/or creeks. If you see a messy storm drain, a cluttered creek, or water pouring down a storm drain when it’s not raining, take a picture and e-mail it to us with the exact location (street and cross street, or address), the day and time, along with your name and contact information.
HTO will then call the appropriate officials to conduct a cleanup or investigation, and we will notify you when action has been taken. You will then go back to the site and take a picture of the clean-up and e-mail that picture to us. We will give you a signed community services form to indicate you have done this service for us, you will earn a Heal the Ocean t-shirt, and we will list you on our website with your before and after pictures!
Our members and community service hour students are a wonderful resource for helping us keep our oceans clean. If this is something you would like to participate in, please contact Christi Davis at our office (965-6570) or e-mail her at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Thank you!
Photo Caption: Cody Traxler and friends inspecting a storm drain
While on HTO staff, Priya Verma, now a UCSB doctoral candidate, outlined the perimeter of an unlined landfill in the city of Santa Barbara waterfront area, where monitoring wells show presence of chemicals and toxins, and where groundwater is pulled to the ocean and possibly into Laguna Channel. Because of HTO’s work, the Regional Water Quality Control Board recently required the city of Santa Barbara to produce a Wet Weather Preparedness Report and a Sampling Analysis Plan for the landfill - as well as a Report of Waste Discharge (ROWD) which we will be reviewing.
General Comment: “It is now general knowledge that construction projects are the best, or most doable situations for improving (or making worse) storm water runoff, since it is still very difficult to treat or control storm water once it’s released into the street and storm drain system to the ocean…”
This site was created by several Rincon Point homeowners with the goal of developing an objective forum to discuss the ongoing sewer project. The site will host an ongoing conversation through which homeowners and others with valuable knowledge can work together. As the project progresses, everyone can post information (Q & A’s) to inform the collective knowledge of the community and ensure that the sewer project gets completed at/or under budget. It is our goal to encourage an agreeable location for sewer equipment (such as the pump stations) as well as to minimize landscape damage.
This site was created by several Rincon Point homeowners with the goal of developing an objective forum to discuss the ongoing sewer project. The site will host an ongoing conversation through which homeowners and others with valuable knowledge can work together. As the project progresses, everyone can post information (Q & A’s) to inform the collective knowledge of the community and ensure that the sewer project gets completed at/or under budget. It is our goal to encourage an agreeable location for sewer equipment (such as the pump stations) as well as to minimize landscape damage.
