High Bacteria Level at Some Beaches Told : Environment: Heal the Bay issues a warning about swimming in ocean, saying health guidelines are being violated.

Advice to swimmers this summer: Stay away from Santa Monica Pier, parts of Malibu and the benign-sounding Mother’s Beach in Marina del Rey. Avoid flowing storm drains. Stay out of the water during rainstorms, and do not venture back for at least three days.

Those dismal warnings, among others, emerged Monday from a report card on bacterial pollution at Los Angeles County beaches released by a well-known environmental group that wants to make sure that a day at the beach does not land beach-goers in bed.

The group’s analysis of official water pollution monitoring data revealed that the water at some county beaches violates health guidelines as much as half the time. During rainstorms, 90% of the beaches studied received the worst grade possible, F.

“On a rainy day, about 10 billion gallons of polluted storm water flow into Santa Monica Bay,” said Adi Liberman, executive director of the group Heal the Bay. “That’s like filling up the Coliseum 20 times and dumping that polluted water into the ocean.”

Beach pollution in Los Angeles County is largely a product of urban runoff--an accumulation of domestic and commercial waste dumped or inadvertently washed into storm drains throughout the county and swept into Santa Monica Bay.

The pollutants include pesticides, herbicides, garden fertilizers, animal waste, oil from leaky cars, lawn clippings and innumerable other contaminants that make their way daily into gutters.

“The combination of millions of people dumping tiny amounts of water creates this sort of chemical stew that you see here in Ballona Creek,” said Chuck Ellis, a county public works official who attended the Heal the Bay news conference at the creek in Playa del Rey.

“The solution is upstream where you change people’s behavior and they stop dumping,” he said. “It sounds rather innocuous to one person with a leaf blower putting leaves in the catch basin . . . but multiply that times 4.5 or 5 million people.”

In their report, Heal the Bay researchers analyzed official state and county water-quality monitoring data collected daily and weekly from April, 1991, through this April. The samples came from 49 locations from Leo Carillo State Beach in the north to Torrance in the south.

The state and county collect data on three types of bacteria--total coliform, fecal coliform and enterococcus. For the water to be considered safe for swimming and surfing, the bacteria levels in the “surf zone” must remain below certain established limits.

Though the “indicator bacteria” do not usually cause illness, they indicate the presence of other microorganisms that may. No health study has ever been done, but many swimmers and surfers say they have developed infections.

The most surprising findings in the study came from sampling at a beach three miles north of Pepperdine University off Latigo Drive in Malibu. Even during dry weather, enterococcus levels at that site violated state health objectives 52.3% of the time.

Total and fecal coliform standards were violated 16% and 18.2% of the time, respectively. Analysts tentatively attributed the high levels of bacteria in the area, which was otherwise relatively clean, to construction a short distance inland.

Other dry weather hot spots were a site near a storm drain at Santa Monica Canyon, the surf 100 yards south of Santa Monica Pier, Mother’s Beach and Redondo Pier. Those got grades of C and D, indicating violation of at least one standard more than 20% of the time. When wet and dry weather measurements were combined, other sites that received D’s and F’s included one near the notorious Pico-Kenter drain in Santa Monica, the Los Angeles County fire dock in Marina del Rey and the north side of Redondo Pier.

The worst offender was Ballona Creek--”our biggest and nastiest storm drain,” Heal the Bay co-founder Dorothy Green called it. Even in dry weather, total coliform and enterococcus levels in the creek exceeded the standards 36.2% and 63.8% of the time.

Several beaches appeared to have improved since the group’s first report last year. Those included beaches near the Ashland Avenue drain in Santa Monica, the Pulga drain in Pacific Palisades and the Pico-Kenter drain.

County officials recommend that no one enter the bay during a rainstorm and that everyone wait at least three days after a storm before going in. They also suggest that people swim at least 100 yards away from a flowing storm drain.

Report Card for Los Angeles County Beaches

Pollution at some Los Angeles County Beaches violates health standards during as much as half the year, according to an analysis of water-sampling data released by the environmental group Heal the Bay. In the “report card,” beaches received an A if public health standards for three types of bacteria were violated less than 15% of the time and an F if all three standards were violated more than 20% of the time or two standards were violated more than 30% of the time. Zuma Beach: A Malibu Lagoon: B Malibu Creek: D Topanga Canyon: A Santa Monica Canyon: A, B, D Santa Monica: D Pico-Kenter Storm Drain: D Venice: F Marina del Rey: F Ballona Creek: F El Segundo: A Manhattan Beach: A Hermosa Beach: A Redondo Beach Pier (King Harbor): F,C Torrance: A