As usual, it rained more than an inch, and the city of San Diego just let 1.2 million gallons of raw sewage flow into the ocean. Right into Ocean Beach, where I live... Thanks San Diego... You rock! Rather than taxing citizens or paying the fines to fix your faulty sewage system, you just let 1.2 million flow down the san diego river. They sat there and watched for 22 straight hours and did nothing. The protocol is to just watch it happen. San Diego weezled its way out of paying the fines for the felonies activities. And now, they just wait until the sh** slows down, then they turn the system back on... The Point Loma facility hasn;t exploded yet this time, but im sure its only a matter of hours before they open that pipe up and start letting "partially" treated waste dump out... Looks like I will be surfing in La Jolla for the next few weeks... Such a shame. Every Lobster from Mission Bay to Mexico will now be poisonous. GREAT! They really blew it when the designed this city. 3 million people, high rises still popping up everywhere, and we cant even treat our own sewage properly....
Sorry for whining. I do it everytime I know. I also know that the midatlantic treatment plants have backup plans for this and apparently this kind of thing can't happen there... But still. Wildlife dead. Surf ruined for a while. Fishermans livelyhoods at stake... sucks regardless of where it is.
i hope like hell that you're just kidding... zach, i think one of the reasons for the backups here in the midatlantic/northeast region of the country is that it rains/snows a whole lot more here than it does in southern california. correct me if i'm wrong, but there are "only" 1 or 2 times a year when it rains so hard that it overloads the system (obviously that's 1 or 2 times more than preferable). in the fall/winter months here, it seems to rain on that scale 1 or 2 times per month. but it does occasionally happen here...but it is very, very rare. stay healthy! that really sucks b/c it seems like the surf has been pretty good out there lately!
when i was living in Hawaii this happened. The sewage system couldnt handle the surge so geniouses in Honolulu let er rip.....into the Ala wai canal. There was $#it in the water for months.....hell its still there just not as concentrated as the initial spill. Flesh eating bacteria is naturally ocurring but when you feed it a poo sandwich it multiplies rapidly. Not to mention the antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria and viruses that just were released from those pipes. Long story short....A 34 year old man was pushed into the Ala wai (a haouli that got into a scuffle with some "locals" that think their hawaiian) and the miniscule cuts on his hands and knees got infected with staff and flesh eating bacteria. Within 3 days they amputated all four limbs (legs and arms) in an attempt to save his life....He died within 7 days of being pushed into raw sewage. A woman was surfing bowls (at ala moana) and fell on the $hit covered reef and got a small gash on her butt cheek. THey amputated the entire butt cheek. Luckilly she lived. There was a guy walking down the beach beach combing (at ala moana beachpark) and he said he had a small cut on his toe from several days prior that was already healing and never touched the water. He ended up losing most of his foot from a staff infection a week later. When they first let the sewage flow there were no warnings for a few days. After the guy died they closed the whole south shore around town for an entire month. Needless to say, plenty of waves went unridden. People were afraid to surf around the whole island. Even North shore was relatively empty. I scored Mokulaia for two weeks by myself overhead and perfect. Anyway....I would stay out of the water for a while. Out here (delmarva) we dont have the same systems as LA and Honolulu. Partly because its flat and you dont get the mountain runoff which is amplified when it pours. And the sewage systems are different too. So thanks Muffi Hannemann for $h!tting on Hawaii....chump
i remember hearing & reading about this...it was 2005, i think, around the same time my father had a mild MRSA infection in his knee from hitting a reef in panama earlier that summer. he ended up being very lucky...he "only" has arthritis in that knee & no cartiledge to cushion it b/c the bacteria ate it all...
Actually the older cities of the Northeast are the worst culprits. They have ancient combined storm drain and sewer systems. Essentially, when it rains the streets drain down the inlets you see on the road, directly into the sewage conveyance systems. In modern cities, these systems are seperate. When there is a large amount of rain, the systems overload so it has to release excess water so the treatment plant doesn't flood out. What results is RAW sewage dumped into the discharge area. Wilmington and Philadelphia both locally have this type of system that I'm aware of. But unfortunately our local surfrider would rather focus on the discharge of TREATED effluent in Rehoboth, than the millions and millions of gallons of untreated raw sewage surchage entering the Delaware river from Wilmington and Philadelphia. And to quote: source: http://www.septicprotector.com/Delawaredanger.html 700 MILLION GALLONS from Wilmington which is what 1/10th the size of Philly upstream...not to mention New York, Boston, Dirty Jerz, ect.
well Zach, you're half right....while it's true that SD storm systems become overwhelmed by storms of this magnitude, it must be remembered that the greater quantity of raw sewage and pollution actually comes from Mexico through the Tijuana Sloughs (river). Ever heard of the infamous "Mexican Brown Trout"? The sadder part is, that hundreds of millions of Federal and State dollars (i.e., "taxes") went towards building a "state of the art" sewage treatment facility for Mexico. I don't believe Mexico reciprocated much, if at all (typical). But as soon as the facility was built, it was basically obsolete....it wasn't built to handle to outflow of the millions of people that live in Tijuana. Add to the fact, that many of Mexico's sewage systems empty straight into Mexican oceans (Ensenada and Baja Malibu immediately come to mind). Oh, and I wish you luck surfing in LJ....hopefully, they will escape the pollution but I doubt it. The last time I remember a storm this large was in 1983, and the entire coast was polluted from IB to The Ranch. I had the misfortune of paddling out to big Blacks during the aftermath, and the soup was brown and stinky. Even got a mouth full of it taking a big one on the head....very nasty.
ocean is a delicate eco system I was surfing in deal nj maybe 4 years ago when sewage ran off into the ocean from asbury mixing in with th red tide what ever that is , any way me and my 3 friends were surfing in wetsuits having fun then a police officer whistled us out if the water bc of the sewage and I remember how warm certain spots of the water were, I guess from fresh poopoo.. moral of the story is we all got fevers for 2 days, but it was worth the sh!t covered barrel I got, which sadly most surfers don't get to experience.
The currents all flow north to south from the mission bay inlet to mexico, so all of the TJ river pollution is trapped down in IB/Coronado. Testing Facilities on point loma and ocean beach never pick up high bacteria levels when the river has problems down south. The SD river flows directly into dog beach in OB and the Mission Jetties. Luckily for mission beach, even when millions of gallons of of waste flow out, it immediately takes a left turn and the bacteria levels in MB/PB are clean... La Jolla is isolated from any major sewage outlets, but the entire hill of la jolla drains down into the beach, so although LJ never has run ins with major sewage leaks, it does get very nasty from all the polluted runoff. Its already been 48 hours since the last rain, so by tomorrow, things should be ok north of the SD river... But yeah, I feel bad for the guys down in IB. They have beach closures all year long because of the TJ river. That is why i have only surfed there twice. I avoid Coronada all the way south of Baja Malibu
this was around june of 2007, correct? if so, this is the same incident that resulted in a 6 month + battle w/ a massive e.coli infection that nearly killed me. i was surfing seaside w/ a cut on the top of my foot...the bacteria got into my blood stream & wouldn't leave. 2 hospitalizations, 2 courses of major antibiotics, & about a million blood tests later, i was finally declared infection free.
yeaaa it was, damn bro that sounds horrible , thankd gd i ddidnt have any cuts but i still had a bad fever and a lot of pressure in my eyes . good to heare that your better and hopefully still surfing
thanks...yup, stilling surfing & infection free! i feel like i got REALLY lucky w/ that whole situation. definitely could have been worse. just a little anecdote to illustrate what zach's talking about.
Don't ever stop complaining. I feel like I'm one of the very few people who pays attention to this kind of ****, it's nice to know other people actually care, too.
Skeglegs, i could be making this up but i thought that philly changed that, i thought they had the two seperate run off and waste pipes. I have family that live all around the philly area and theyve said it's not combined but they did say all of their waste travels to a plant in philly underneath the walt whitman bridge thats actually one of the best in the country.
