Here's a nice accomplishment of Donna Frye's to show others!

Take this to voters in the coming November election...

This isn't just "talk" about clean beaches. There are some statistics noted in this article that San Diego beaches have gone against national trends of other beaches getting a lot more contaminated and have shown a reversal of contamination levels here in San Diego. Now that's some concrete stuff to show for those concerned about their time at the beach here, amongst other things.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-8-5/30959.html

Contamination Forces More Beach Closures Nationwide
San Diego Struggles for Clean Water in the Current of Receding Support

By Michelle Brazeau
The Epoch Times San Diego Staff

...

The NRDC report indicates that states with the biggest jump in beach closings and advisory dates compared with 2003 were Texas (1,074 percent), Washington (700 percent), Maryland (405 percent), Minnesota (333 percent), Michigan (174 percent), New York (117 percent) and Illinois (102 percent). Maine went from having no beach closures or advisory days in 2003 to having 56 in 2004; Hawaii went from having zero in 2003 to 1,169 in 2004.

On July 28, San Diego Baykeeper reported that beach closings due to hazardous bacterial contamination fell this year for San Diego County. In 2004, there were 472 beach closures, down 47 percent from the 896 recorded in 2003. This improvement is the fruit of grassroots, heart-fought battles against apathetic officials, many initiated by environmental activist turned San Diego City Councilwoman, Donna Frye.

For the nine years prior to her current post, Frye had her eye on the beach, concerned for the well-being of children, tourists, surfers and other citizens recreating at San Diego’s beautiful beaches, and yes, her surfer-husband, who became seriously ill due to polluted water. No one was telling people about the pollution or its potential health risks, so Frye made public awareness her mission.

“People were being placed at great risk because of pollution created from runoff that was going onto our beaches,” said Frye. “Much of this pollution was being caused by our sewer system, which was leaking raw sewage right into the storm drains and discharging it directly onto our beaches.”

...

By not taking to the streets when the election was stolen then, this is what we get!

San Diego does have a problem with an aging sewer system which hasn't been properly cared for or expanded sufficiently as the population has expanded and urban sprawl has grown but luckily sewage spills are way, way done since Federal regulators started to crack down on our incompetent city council. Now the single largest source for Beach closures is raw sewage being dumped by cities in Mexico which ocean currents carry north into the US. Another major problem is the Tijuana river which starts in Mexico but which flows north into the US; the city of Tijuana dumps raw untreated sewage into the Tijuana river thus making it one of the most polluted rivers in North America.

Both the US Federal Government and the State of California have been protesting this pollution for decades however it doesn't seem to have motivated the Mexican Federal Government, the State of Baja California, or the City of Tijuana to clean up their act. This area is ideal for tourism but water pollution from Mexico is a major and growing problem which is resulting in more beach closures each year. Ideally, I would like to see some sort of international solution like a treaty requiring Mexico to reach certain water quality goals and maybe the US government assisting Mexico in constructing waste water treatment facilities for large border towns such as Tijuana.

Locally, here in San Diego we could improve our water quality by better protecting the watershed from development and requiring developers to foot the environmental clean up bill which their development has caused. Don't expect that to happen in a town controlled by Republican developers though.