Popular Long Beach swimming spot is poised for restoration
In March the city will launch the first phase of a $15-million project to remove contamination, divert trash and carve out an open channel to the ocean from Colorado Lagoon.
Tony Barboza
Los Angeles Times
02/01/2010
Eleven storm drains empty into Colorado Lagoon in Long Beach, and its
only outlet to the sea -- a 900-foot underground culvert -- is choked
with mussels, clams, sand and barnacles.
So it's no surprise
that one of Southern California's only lagoons -- shallow saltwater
bodies sheltered from the ocean -- is among the dirtiest around. Last
year, Colorado Lagoon was ranked as the state's fourth most-polluted
beach in Heal the Bay's "Beach Bummers" list.
Yet the Y-shaped
basin is one of the most popular swimming spots in the city, packed
with sunbathers and swimmers on hot summer afternoons.
Conservationists
have been working for more than a decade to restore the 18-acre lagoon,
often removing as much as 100 pounds of trash at weekly cleanups.
But only now are their aspirations starting to take shape in a big way.
On
March 1, the city will begin the first phase of a $15-million
restoration project that will catch trash before it reaches the lagoon,
remove contaminated sediment and revegetate its banks, and it could
soon carve out an open channel to the sea to restore cleansing tidal
flows.
"Everyone that lives around here knows the lagoon is in
really bad shape, and a lot of people have written it off and said it's
too dirty to fix," said Dave Pirazzi, president of the nonprofit
community group Friends of Colorado Lagoon. "We're trying to turn that around."
Once
part of the Los Cerritos Wetlands, Colorado Lagoon was dredged in the
1920s along with other low-lying tidelands in Alamitos Bay for
recreational rowing. Divers leaped from a three-story floating platform
to compete in trials for the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles
But over the decades, the ecological health of the lagoon has deteriorated.
Today,
the lagoon's water has elevated bacterial levels, and its sediment is
contaminated with lead and other metals. Mercury, DDT and other toxins
have infested the fish and mussels that call it home.
In 2002,
the state designated the lagoon an "impaired water body" as trash,
debris and sediment from a vast watershed continued to drain into the
lagoon, the area's low-point. The beach on the lagoon's southern edge
is often closed because of sewage spills, most recently on Jan. 12,
when 876 gallons of waste from a clogged sewer made its way into the
lagoon.
Long Beach public health officials, who take weekly
water samples at the lagoon to monitor bacteria levels, say the
measurements only intermittently spike to unsafe levels. But there is
no doubt that urban runoff and inadequate circulation have fouled the
water.
"People love the Colorado Lagoon; it's something that's
near and dear to the hearts of a lot of people that live there and have
swam there," said Nelson Kerr, manager of the city's bureau of
environmental health. "So we're looking with a lot of anticipation at
this project. It's very promising."
The project is being paid
for with federal stimulus funds doled out by the State Resources
Control Board. The Port of Long Beach also advanced $1.3 million toward
the restoration and paid for environmental and engineering studies.
If the entire restoration is completed, the port stands to receive
credits from state regulators that could offset future expansion.
Some other improvements could help speed along the lagoon's recovery.
