Stream Team Goes to the Source

MALIBU CREEK STATE PARK —  As children splash in the sun-flecked creek, Mark Abramson trudges up to the water’s edge, wearing what looks like a large calculator draped around his neck.

He is covered with dangling wires, and something--an antenna, maybe?--is sprouting from his backpack.

The kids in the creek stop playing. A family picnicking on the bank falls silent, sizing up the guy in the sci-fi get-up.

Abramson barely notices. He is busy tallying his own list of the dangers threatening this watery landscape.

Though he looks more like a treasure hunter or a UFO enthusiast, Abramson is the man behind the latest effort to clean up the Malibu Creek watershed, a 110-square-mile area that drains into Santa Monica Bay.

Most of the watershed is still an undeveloped oasis of rugged hillsides in the Santa Monica Mountains and Simi Hills, fleeced with chaparral and threaded with seasonal streams. But as the grimy metropolis that surrounds it steadily closes in, damage to Malibu Creek and its tributaries have left its outlet into the sea, at Surfrider Beach in Malibu, one of the most polluted shorelines in Southern California.

Possible culprits run the gamut from the usual suspects--such as the Tapia sewage treatment plant, which discharges treated waste water into the creek during winter--to less obvious sources, such as leaky septic tanks, horse manure and pesticides seeping from golf courses and lawns.

As development marches on, problems such as urban runoff and stream bank erosion also multiply. Concrete dams block steelhead trout from migrating upstream. Invasive plants, introduced to the area long ago by humans, are crowding out native vegetation that provides wildlife habitat.

It is a classic battle between nature’s sense of balance and the human urge to build houses and highways. As the number of people in the picturesque watershed grows--the population has shot up more than 25% in the last 10 years, by one estimate--their collective impact threatens to destroy the rustic beauty that drew them here.

In an effort to map the problems, Abramson and his Stream Team, a group of volunteers recruited by the Santa Monica-based environmental group Heal the Bay, spend weekends slogging through streams. They gather water samples and tote global positioning devices into the brush to more accurately chart what they’re finding on foot.

“We’re just seeing nightmare after nightmare,” Abramson said. “There’s no reason it has to be like this.”

Study Called Area a Decaying Ecosystem

A watershed is an area in which all water drains into a common outlet--in this case, the Pacific Ocean at Malibu Lagoon. The lower part of Malibu Creek and the lagoon are now so developed and polluted that a three-year UCLA study released in May branded the area “a decaying and dysfunctional ecosystem.”

Malibu Lagoon is home to two federally endangered fish species--the tidewater goby and the southern steelhead trout--and it’s also a popular rest stop for migrating birds.

People too flock to the famous shoreline. Surfrider Beach, renowned among surfers worldwide for quarter-mile rides on sculpted waves, draws well over a million visitors each year.

But the postcard--perfect beach is a stubborn blotch on Heal the Bay’s annual water quality report card. Not only did Surfrider flunk during the wet season this year, it also made the list of the 10 filthiest beaches in Southern California. Malibu Creek, meanwhile, is considered an impaired waterway under the federal clean Water Act.

The Tapia plant, about five miles upstream, has long been blamed for the dirty water below. During the wet season, the facility discharges about 10 million gallons of treated effluent a day, adding nutrients to the creek. Nutrients can promote algae growth, which depletes oxygen and endangers fish. The UCLA study said Tapia is also the probable source of giardia and cryptosporidium, two pathogens from human or animal waste that researchers found in the creek.

Now, the Stream Team and others are looking upstream from Tapia at the growing urbanization of the upper reaches of the watershed--places like Agoura Hills and Westlake Village--for more clues to the troubled waters of Malibu Creek.

“‘The increase in urbanization has had a tremendous impact,” said Melinda Becker, chief of the standards unit at the California Regional Water Quality Control Board. “‘We’ve made a lot of progress, but in the meantime there’s been a lot of development--you know, bigger houses, smaller yards, more concrete. So there’s a lot more runoff and the runoff is picking up more pollution.

“Tapia is clearly the largest source of nutrient loading to the creek,” she said. “Now the question is, what are the cumulative impacts of other sources?”

One major impact is the sheer amount of water coursing through the Malibu Creek watershed, which straddles Los Angeles and Ventura counties and includes the cities of Agoura Hills and Westlake Village, as well as parts of Malibu, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley. About 100,000 people live in the area, and studies have estimated that the population is growing by up to 2% each year.

All those flushing toilets send a rising tide of dirty water to Tapia. Ten years ago, the plant treated the waste water for 80,000 people in the area, said Randal Orton, who supervises water conservation for Las Virgenes Municipal Water District. Today, that number is 103,000 customers.

Most of the water consumed in the area, moreover, does not belong there: About 6.6 billion gallons are imported from Northern California each year.

Meanwhile, development throughout the watershed has increased the amount of impervious surfaces like roads, parking lots and rooftops that do not absorb water but collect grease and oil, animal feces and garbage.

When it rains, a patch of grassy soil would be able to absorb some of these contaminants, but rain on a sprawling parking lot just sends water whooshing, pollutants and all. into storm drains. All of which run--unfiltered--into Malibu Creek and its seven tributaries.

The increases in both imported water and impervious surfaces have boosted water volume in the creek. The rising flow--10 times what it was 60 years ago, according to a federal study--erodes slopes and stream banks, uprooting native plants.

Keeping pollutants out of storm drains is a major challenge throughout the watershed. In Calabasas, cement contractors have been caught washing their troughs out directly into the drains, said Heather Lea Merenda, the city’s storm water program manager.

In Agoura Hills, construction workers were recently spotted hosing spilled paint into the gutters. Turpentine, detergent, pesticides, pet waste and cigarette butts also wash into the system, officials said.

“‘I feel like a broken record half the time,” Merenda said. “‘I’m saying, ‘Storm drains aren’t for waste. Storm drains aren’t for waste. They’re for rain.’ Washing your car is a perfect example. It’s technically legal, but it causes pollution.”

Horses too may be contaminating the water. Researchers suspect that horse waste accounts for elevated bacteria and nutrient levels at two of the Stream Team’s testing sites: Cold Creek in Monte Nido and Las Virgenes Creek in Malibu Creek State Park, Abramson said. Both areas drain into Malibu Creek.

But Ruth Gerson, an Agoura equestrian, questioned the link to horses. “They’re just saying, ‘Hey, there’s a big animal there, let’s blame it on the horses.’ Nobody has seen firm data,” she said.

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When Abramson lumbers into the water in placid Malibu Creek State Park. carting his global positioning equipment and a digital camera, he sees things most people don’t. “This is a possible barrier to fish migration,” he says, pointing at a cement stream crossing. “It could keep steelhead from getting through.”

The path cut alongside the stream has weakened the hillside, he continues. The trees are collapsing in the eroded soil. Algae blooms in thick clumps across the water.

Abramson shakes his head. “The creeks here are absolutely stunning,” he says. “They’re as nice as they come. Then you go to some parts of the stream that are just in the middle of nowhere, man, I mean these cascade, plunge-pool, waterfall-type scenes, and they’re just covered with algae.”

During a May 12 stream walk, Abramson said his team even spotted discharge from Tapia flowing into the creek, although the facility is banned from discharging there from April 15 to Nov. 15. Tapia officials said that they had been pumping effluent into an artificial wetlands without realizing it was resurfacing in the creek.

The incident appears to be a violation of Tapia’s permit, said Winnie Jesena, a regulator at the water quality board. Inspectors found Tapia had discharged up to 1 million gallons a day for about a week, she said.

Abramson Says Watershed ‘Save-Able’

Some damage to the watershed, however, is decreasing. Tapia has reduced the nitrates it discharges into the creek by about 24% over the last few years. The Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains restored a 500-foot stream bank along Las Virgenes Creek.

Cities in the watershed have begun requiring anti-runoff measures from developers. In Agoura Hills, for example, new parking lots must have filters in their storm drains to catch the oil and grease from cars.

And in one of the most ambitious projects, the city of Malibu is installing a $1-million high-tech machine at the end of a filth-spewing storm drain to disinfect water before it hits the lagoon.

For all its problems, the Malibu Creek watershed is only about 17% developed--”absolutely saveable,” Abramson said. And it has lots of friends. A watershed council composed of various stakeholders meets regularly to try to restore the area.

Federal pollution rules are getting tougher too. Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agreed to set limits to clean up beaches and waterways throughout Los Angeles and Ventura counties, settling a lawsuit filed by Heal the Bay and Santa Monica BayKeeper.

By taking a broader approach to tackling pollution, especially storm water runoff from countless sources, regulators hope to finally wash Malibu Creek clean. “‘It’s not somebody dumping 10 trash bags into the river,” said Calabasas’ Merenda.

“It’s the accumulated impact of 60 million thoughtless acts.”