An El Cajon Business’s Journey from Polluter To Environmental Leader
The United States and California have some of the best water quality regulations in the world. The problem is, they are seldom enforced. That’s where we come in. San Diego Coastkeeper’s identifies illegal polluters like government bodies and businesses and works, often hand-in-hand with polluters, to bring them into compliance with the law. The end …
Will the Trump Administration Destroy San Diego’s Water? We Won’t Let Him.
Who is being put in charge of our nation’s environment? President Elect Trump has appointed Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier with a history of suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to head the EPA. Along with a litany of other promised anti-environment policies and appointees, the new administration poses a real and serious threat …
From Matt’s Desk: An Intro to Industrial Stormwater Enforcement
Often, businesses are willing to upgrade their facilities and their practices to the legal standards necessary to keep our waters fishable and swimmable.
When a Safe Harbor Isn’t Safe
Polluted runoff is San Diego County’s number one water quality problem. It’s what causes the Department of Environmental Health to issue 72-hour polluted beach advisories when it rains and what causes our local streams and rivers to receive poor health ratings. To address that issue, the Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (“MS4”) permit requires our …
What is A Waterkeeper?
As San Diego Coastkeeper’s Waterkeeper, Legal & Policy Director, and attorney, it is my job to ensure that those businesses, governments, and individuals who pollute San Diego’s waters are held accountable and that our waters are both protected and restored. The honest truth is that while many of our pollution laws in San Diego and …
What Can Insects Teach Us About Our Water?
San Diego County has at least 360 known pollutant impairments in 166 bodies of water. How do we know? One of the methods that San Diego Coastkeeper uses to identify polluted water is to take a survey of the insects that live there. Some insects are more sensitive to pollution than others. By collecting information …
Water Quality: What’s Drought Got to Do With It?
Every year, Heal the Bay puts out a beach report card, providing essential water quality information to the millions of people who swim, surf or dive in the coastal waters of the West Coast. The report card assigns A-to-F letter grades to 456 California beaches for three reporting periods in 2015-2016, based on levels of …
Water Quality in 2015 – How Drought Causes Worse Water Quality
In 2015, all nine of the watersheds tested as Fair, Marginal or Poor on San Diego Coastkeeper’s Water Quality Index scoring system, all earning the same abnormally low scores as 2014.