Bad News for PV

[tmaas]

PV divers,
Please take some time to review these proposals from the folks who control the sewage outfall at PV. They want the entire West face as a reserve to avoid having to deal with a MPA in the area of their jurisdiction. They are wrong on the Ecotrust data saying little difference between the West face and the FIN proposal off Portuguese Bend.
Terry

PS,
The attachments were too large for Spearboard, so I hosted them on my web site:

http://freedive.net/MLPA/water_quality_proposals_for_pv.htm

[FIT4FISH]

Thanx again for the heads up.

[ladvr]

Thanks Terry. It is an interesting analysis but clearly has some flawed data and logic behind the proposal. Just a few things that caught my attention:

Prevailing Easterly currents should keep the discharge away from PB.

The kelp seems to be doing just fine between Pt Fermin and Pt Vicente.

Coastal erosion at PB is a "natural" process and creates some productive habitat for species that need sandy bottom for protection and reproduction.

I see more abalone on the East side then the west.

[tmaas]

Thanks Terry. It is an interesting analysis but clearly has some flawed data and logic behind the proposal. Just a few things that caught my attention:

Prevailing Easterly currents should keep the discharge away from PB.

The kelp seems to be doing just fine between Pt Fermin and Pt Vicente.

Coastal erosion at PB is a "natural" process and creates some productive habitat for species that need sandy bottom for protection and reproduction.

I see more abalone on the East side then the west.

Thanks Mike!
It is exactly this kind of feedback that will help Eric and I defend your area.
Keep it coming! The water-quality folks have a single agenda—keep any MPA away from any sewage outfall. They are deathly worried about having to spend even more funds to manage/monitor/fund their outfall networks.

Hey! Why aren't you out diving?


Terry

[MiguelT]

Unlike their questionable page 9 in-house study graph data, the EPA graph is:

http://www.epa.gov/region09/superfund/pvshelf/images/ddtconcbig.gif

Seems like they tweaked their data to show that northern pv is unpolluted whereas the EPA says that it's equally polluted. Also, the EPA study shows that some of the cleanest water in all of PV is between white's point and portuguese bend due to the "bad" coastal erosion that actually naturally cleans the inshore regions and creates more biodiversity and not less.

The EPA stated that "The first step to protect the public health is to make sure people aren't eating white croaker contaminated with dangerous levels of DDT." The massive amount of increased pressure in the polluted area due to MPA's in healthy areas would likely cause a lower quality of life for recreational fishermen, especially the shore fishermen that would be congregating on those areas, some of whom fish due to poverty and regularly eat white croakers. As per the EPA's logic, concentrating fishing pressure in contaminated areas through MPA's would endanger the public health, and a much better alternative would be a few MPA's in the water treatment's jurisdiction areas to be able to fully study the reproductive effects of pollutants in contaminated areas rather than leave those as the only local areas open to public consumption. A crafty lawyer would be able to make a pretty good case that someone got sick because the only fishing areas that they could access to feed their families were the most polluted in the region.

Also, the fact that there can't be an MPA there because there's a nonexistent plan on polluting it much more heavily in the future is very, very unlikely being that the EPA is extremely stringent on new pollutants being added to superfund sites. They're not paying 140 million to clean up the area just to give a waste water company the permits dump more pollutants in there.

[MiguelT]

Also, the EPA funded an additional oceanographic study that ran from December 2007 to April 2008, do we have access to that one?

[John Hughes]

that is bad news Terry. Thanks for keeping us informed.

With major forces like this involved, makes our battle seem tiny. They definately did their research.

[ladvr]

Thanks Mike!
It is exactly this kind of feedback that will help Eric and I defend your area.
Keep it coming! The water-quality folks have a single agenda—keep any MPA away from any sewage outfall. They are deathly worried about having to spend even more funds to manage/monitor/fund their outfall networks.

Hey! Why aren't you out diving?


Terry

Most of my diving is within a 100yds from shore. i can't really speak to what the status is of the habitat out to 3 miles.

Mike

[Seacidal]

Also, the EPA funded an additional oceanographic study that ran from December 2007 to April 2008, do we have access to that one?

I haven't looked specifically for the study you mentioned, but it is probably accessible through the EPA ECOTOX database search engine.

http://cfpub.epa.gov/ecotox/advanced_query.htm

[mthomas]

I was looking at the picture of Sedimentation and Turbidity from the Portuguese Bend landslide and thought thats a crappy photo. They have all these fancy charts on DDT but all they have to prove sediment coming from the land slide area is covering low-lying reefs is a grainy aerial photo from 1986. Why? The original Portuguese land slide happened 37 THOUSAND years ago. Thats the ancient slide. The newest slide which is less deep started moving several thousand years ago with the most recent activity starting in 1956 and has been dramatically slowed down since then. Theres some great structure in that area that hasnt been covered in the thousands of years of landslides. In the U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey, Open File Report 2007-1133, they dont even mention Portuguese bend in there 70 year survey.
In 2005 the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy got 399 acres of land at Portuguese bend. Thats the largest Reserve on the Peninsula. Abalone Cove has another 109 acre preserve. The Fin map in conjunction with those preserves is win win situation.

Mike

[ladvr]

I was looking at the picture of Sedimentation and Turbidity from the Portuguese Bend landslide and thought thats a crappy photo. They have all these fancy charts on DDT but all they have to prove sediment coming from the land slide area is covering low-lying reefs is a grainy aerial photo from 1986. Why? The original Portuguese land slide happened 37 THOUSAND years ago. Thats the ancient slide. The newest slide which is less deep started moving several thousand years ago with the most recent activity starting in 1956 and has been dramatically slowed down since then. Theres some great structure in that area that hasnt been covered in the thousands of years of landslides. In the U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey, Open File Report 2007-1133, they dont even mention Portuguese bend in there 70 year survey.
In 2005 the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy got 399 acres of land at Portuguese bend. Thats the largest Reserve on the Peninsula. Abalone Cove has another 109 acre preserve. The Fin map in conjunction with those preserves is win win situation.

Mike

I agree with your comments about the photo they chose to use. Its not the norm for that area.

[ladvr]

One more thing. Regarding kelp habitat and mortality. When we went through the last El Nino 95-97? and lost the kelp around PV, one of the few kelp beds that survived was located on the south side in the “deep freeze” area. Why did it survive? Probably because the water temps run a few degrees colder due to wind and upwelling. Temp break or terrifin records show this phenomena quite well. Additionally, the south/east side is not as exposed as the North west side to the swell that comes in an El Nino year. Most North west swell passes by and the south swells are mostly in the shadow of Catalina Island. So the kelp has less lost due to wave action breaking the hold fasts. Just my observations. I am not a biologist. It is something that should be looked at . We are due for another El Nino year.

[Seacidal]

Here's some more recent data (2007 report) on the DDT and PCB contaminated sediments in the PV area.

This doesn't address larger regional water contamination, only sediment.
Studies on other compounds, including Hg (mercury) have shown significant contamination levels in fish (including WSB, calico and sand bass) from all around the peninsula, despite the major upwelling that accompanies the deep water canyon structure.

[ladvr]

Here's some more recent data (2007 report) on the DDT and PCB contaminated sediments in the PV area.

This doesn't address larger regional water contamination, only sediment.
Studies on other compounds, including Hg (mercury) have shown significant contamination levels in fish (including WSB, calico and sand bass) from all around the peninsula, despite the major upwelling that accompanies the deep water canyon structure.

Chip,
Any idea how the fish study was conducted? Number of fish sampled, age of fish, depth etc.. The last study I looked had a low volume of samples.

Mike

[Seacidal]

Mike,
The fish studies tend to have lower numbers for species we tend to be interested in. I think they might have had a single seabass. But the contamination level was definitely elevated and it wasn't a very big fish. This stuff usually gets worse with age.

You can download and read the report here.

http://www.epa.gov/region09/superfund/pvshelf/pdf/montrose_report.pdf

[Bug N' Surf]

Just a quick thought before I hit the sack, so I hope it makes sense. From what I've read and mostly from what I got from Joe, the DDT and other contaminants in the southern PV area mostly affect people and not the vegetation or wildlife. It seems that the animals with the higher concentration of contaminates, like eagles and falcons, is because they eat the dead sea mammals. So it's kind of like a cumulative effect(from what I can understand) where it's ok to eat some fish but if you are consuming large quantities of fish from a contaminated area then obviously you are going to be consuming more contaminates.

The science committee recommends staying at least a half mile away from the outfalls. Here they show the half mile and then also a mile buffer from the outfall. And I find it interesting that they start both proposals at Pt Vicente. Kind of like that is as close as they would like to see it in relation to the outfall.

So I'm thinking the best argument is that an MPA on the southern side would benefit the most good by protecting the habitat and species within that habitat (which has shown to not be affected by the contaminants as people are) and that by closing an area with contaminants harmful to people we are also doing the public the greatest good.

There are also a lot less access to the coast on the southern side of PV compared to the north and west sides. Also I noticed that both of their proposals included Lunada Bay, which is an infamous('locals only vibe') surfing spot that is regarded as one of the premier surfing spots when conditions are right. So since they don't specify that surfing will be allowed, does that mean in order to protect the habitat they will be closing this spot?

Wow I have so much to say about this area because it is like literally my back yard and I love it so much. I need to sleep so I can get my thoughts straight.
Terry you can be guaranteed I'll help out as much as I can in regards to this area. Not sure if you saw the powerpoint I presented at the MLPA in Dana Point, or in the other thread so I'll put it here as well. I'll also email you with more thoughts and ideas.
Here is the link to the other thread
http://www.spearboard.com/showpost.php?p=938558&postcount=7

[Bug N' Surf]

Also just saw the pic miguel posted and also from the report, and my thought/question is how close to shore did they go? Looks like it starts at the 30M depths which is pretty far from shore where we dive and fish.