San Diego Beaches Get Top Grades

By Ed Joyce / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published September 25, 2008 at 9:59 AM PDT

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

An environmental group says all of the 92 monitored beaches in San Diego County received top marks for water quality this summer. A big reason is the continued drought. KPBS Environmental Reporter Ed

An environmental group says all of the 92 monitored beaches in San Diego County received top marks for water quality this summer. A big reason is the continued drought. KPBS Environmental Reporter Ed Joyce has more.

Heal The Bay says 92 locations in San Diego County were monitored between Memorial Day and Labor Day and all received either an A or B grade for water quality.

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Heal The Bay's Mike Grimmer says recent efforts to divert storm drain runoff into sewage treatment systems helped local beaches.

But Grimmer says San Diego's grades benefit because county officials don't intensify monitoring once a beach has been closed because of a sewage spill.

Grimmer: In San Diego since there's a model which is proactively protecting public health we're not seeing the data gathering as extensive as we see in other coastal counties.

Most ot the county's eight beach closures last summer were at Imperial Beach and were caused by massive sewage flows into the Tijuana River from Mexico.

Grimmer says county beaches get good grades mainly because a second summer of drought limited the amount of stormwater runoff into the ocean.

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Los Angeles county beaches didn't fare as well with nearly one out of five getting an F grade.

Long Beach had the worst beach water quality in the state.

Heal The Bay says Orange County had outstanding water quality over the summer, with 98 percent of its 104 monitored beaches getting top marks.

Ed Joyce, KPBS News.

Ed Joyce

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Ed Joyce was the environment reporter and afternoon news anchor for KPBS-FM. Before joining KPBS, he worked as an editor/columnist with Copley News Service in San Diego. Ed has an extensive background in newspaper, radio, web and TV journalism. After graduating with a B.A. in Communications from the University of Washington in Seattle, Ed began a career in broadcast journalism. His work has included stints in public broadcasting, commercial broadcasting and education -- working as an affiliate professor of communication and reporter at the University of Idaho and Washington State University in Pullman, Wash. During the past 20 years he has worked in radio, TV and print as a news reporter, anchor, writer, editor and producer. Along the way he has won numerous awards for general news reporting, newswriting, feature and issue reporting and breaking news reporting from The Associated Press, The Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego Press Club and other organizations. During the mid-1990s, while working for Oregon Public Broadcasting, he was a frequent contributor to National Public Radio, including a feature report on the memorial service for 14 U.S. Forest Service "hotshots" who died fighting a wildfire in Colorado (the crew was based in a central Oregon town). He’s also filed reports with Marketplace, KQED’s California Report and Climate Watch and with national and regional networks throughout the United States. At KPBS, Ed continues his contributions to National Public Radio and other national and regional news organizations. He has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and San Diego Press Club for his environmental reporting at KPBS-FM-TV and for producing and anchoring radio newscasts. In 2007 he was selected a National Press Foundation fellow for Understanding Violent Weather II program. The seminars were held at the National Weather Center in Norman, Okla. In 2008 he spoke at a UC San Diego conference on U.S. National Security as part of the school’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Ed led a discussion with the 18 foreign government officials and academics about the political debate over climate change. In 2010, Ed was elected to a three-year term on the board of the San Diego Press Club.

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