It’s been twenty years since two gutsy water lovers took action to stop the toxic dumping that was slowly killing San Diego Bay. In 1995, they created San Diego Baykeeper and
- Brought major corporations into compliance with pollution laws
- Reduced sewage spills in the City of San Diego by 90 percent
- Reduced countywide beach advisories by 77 percent since 2000
- We drastically improved the health of San Diego Bay.
And as the need became apparent, we turned our attention countywide. Now we’re known as San Diego Coastkeeper–the region’s water quality and water supply watchdog. We’ve grown from a team of two into a movement of thousands of volunteers, members, sponsors and partners passionate about working together to make San Diego more fishable, swimmable and drinkable.
Today we bring together science, education and advocacy to address the region’s most pressing concerns.
- After a 15 year battle, we earned a unanimous city council vote for Pure Water, San Diego’s new water recycling program.
- Twelve years of volunteer water quality data collection has given us insight on regional pollution issues and provided otherwise unavailable information when a waterway is in crisis.
- We offer free environmental STEM education lesson plans to anyone that wants to teach and we deliver the lessons ourselves to thousands of students each year.
- Connecting statewide partners, we made available beach water quality testing that can deliver water quality results to your phone in hours rather than days.
That is celebrateable.
Take a look back at our 20-year timeline of water victories and check out our top accomplishments page to reminisce about all the water wins of the past twenty years.
And take a look ahead. We are already knee-deep in the next twenty years of fighting for our region’s health.
- We are back in San Diego Bay, bringing south bay industrial polluters to task for dirtying our water.
- Our water quality lab is investigating impacts and root causes of the death-by-one-thousand-cuts that strangles our waterways with urban runoff.
- And we are fighting like mad to ensure that the urgency created by statewide drought fuels common sense conservation and innovative new water management practices like recycling and stormwater capture, but doesn’t justify bad choices like energy-hungry desalination.
Whether you’ve been with us since the beginning or are just joining us now, we want you to be part of this movement. Attend our Coastal Champions Awards Ceremony on June 8 and our Seaside Soiree in October. We’re proud to share this celebratory year with you and in honor of you. We celebrate 20 years of victories, but more than that, we celebrate the 20 years to come.
San Diego Coastkeeper stands on the shoulders of those who came before us. And we are leaning in to lift up those who come after us. But for today, you, I and everyone in this movement stands together for fishable, swimmable, drinkable water throughout San Diego County.
Let’s get to work, Megan
