The Cost of Poor Water Quality at Surfrider Malibu

Surfrider Beach at Malibu needs no introduction. Unfortunately, neither do the water quality problems. Malibu has been a chronically polluted beach for decades, consistently getting an "F" on Health the Bay's beach water quality report card. One of the primary culprits is over-capacity and improperly sited septic systems. For years, the City of Malibu has resisted constructing sewage systems as an anti-growth measure while polluting nearby beaches.



Thanks to a strong coalition that included the Malibu Surfing Association, Heal the Bay, Santa Monica Baykeeper and the West LA / Malibu Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation this all changed last Thursday when the LA Regional Water Quality Control Board voted to eliminate septics from Malibu and force the City to install waste water treatment systems. Read more about the outcome here and here and in the LA Times here.

$: Poor water quality is a public health burden that has costs.

Water quality contamination can cause skin rash, eye and ear infections, significant respiratory disease and Gastrointestinal (GI) illness. These illnesses have a variety of economic costs -- ranging from medical expenses to lost time at work to non-market impacts.

At Malibu, Given and Pendleton (2006) estimated that were were 25,000 to 100,000 excess GI illness (meaning above allowable level of illness at clean beaches) in Malibu due to poor water quality.

This results in $1.1 to $4.2 million in public costs annually due to illness associated with contaminated water in Malibu.

$: Clean water has benefits.

Clean water attracts more visitors who spend money (economic impacts) and clean water increase their enjoyment (consumer surplus).

Hanemann & Pendleton (2004) looked at economic benefits of improving beach water quality at Malibu Surfrider Beach by one letter grade. From a C to a B.

They showed that improving water quality at Malibu Surfrider would have two impacts on beach goers. First, the number of trips taken to Surfrider beach would increase by 1,538 visits per year.

The second major impact of an improvement in water quality is the annual consumer’s surplus of beach users improves by more than $140,000/ year.

In addition, the total economic impact (local spending) would increase by $45,000/year.

These are the benefits for one grade. The benefits would be much higher for a 3 or 4 grade level improvement (F to B/A)*.

*The model is nonlinear so you cannot use these figures to extrapolate directly.

These studies show that improving the water quality in Malibu will reduce the high public welfare burden associated with poor water quality and result in increased visits, increased societal benefits (consumer surplus benefits) and increase economics impacts (spending associated with beach visits).

You can read more detail and see the references in my testimony here.

The swell of surfing tourism

SURFING has emerged as an X-factor in the Tweed Shire's economy, after the Gold Coast estimated the sport injected billions of dollars into the city each year.

A recent Surf Industry Development Report, which was a world first, found $2 billion in activity was attributable to the surfing industry on the Gold Coast, making it the city's third biggest industry.

The report estimated the sport generated up to a further $3 billion in output and created 21,760 employment positions paying $1 billion per annum in wages and salaries.

Jim Wilson, General Manger of Connecting Southern Gold Coast said the report showed the southern Gold Coast's economy relied heavily on its pristine beaches.

“That is why we all must respect and not tamper with what nature has created. We need our region to continue to offer up waves of excellence and consistency, as this is what the surfing industry and other businesses depend on to underpin the true surfing experience on the Gold Coast,” Mr Wilson said.

Read the whole thing here....

SurfEcon Myth Busting: Surfers are lazy

Sunrise Surfer from LA times

This morning, I woke up at 4:45 AM to go for a surf at dawn. I suffered through the groggy transition to wakefulness hoping to get better morning conditions and to beat the summertime crowds. I was in the water by 5:30 - 6 guys out. By 6:30 the water was already started to get crowded and by 7:30 is was packed - on a Sunday AM.

I returned home to find these two Facebook messages. Many surfers get up very, very early to go surfing either to get the best conditions (the wind if often blowing offshore), beat the crowds or to get a surf in before work or family obligations.


(Names blurred to protect the committed)

These early beach visits are one of the reasons why surfers are so hard to intercept when economists study beach visitation.

Every morning around the country legions of surfers are waking in the dark, heading to their favorite spot, often changing into a wetsuit before jumping into the chilly ocean at first light. This phenomenon is so common is has its own name - "dawn patrol".

Lazy? I don't think so.

The Coasts & CZMA: A Stimulus for the U.S.

This morning Dr. Linwood Pendleton provided a federal congressional briefing on the coastal economy and the importance of investing in the Coastal Zone Management Act, which provides the management framework for balancing conservation and development in our coastal communities. Here are a few tidbits from Linwood's testimony:

If coastal counties in the US were their own country they would have the world's second largest economy.

The coastal economy is more complex than the rest of our economy because the natural foundations upon which it is based are fluid and constantly changing.

In 2008, the total funding for state coastal programs was only $65.5 million with a cap of $2 million for each of 34 states with coastal programs.

Keep in mind, the coastal economy contributes 5 times more to GDP than the financial sector.

You can read Linwood's entire briefing here: The U.S. Economy Needs the Coastal Zone Management Act.

Effective management of our coasts is essential to protect water quality, beach access, beaches, coral reefs and coastal communities - all elements that are essential to protecting and enjoying our favorite surf spots. As surfers, beach goers and coastal community members, we should all support federal investment in the Coastal Zone Management Act.

The briefing was sponsored by the Coastal States Organization.

Dr. Pendleton is the Senior Fellow and Director of Economic Research at The Ocean Foundation and directs the Coastal Ocean Values Center.

You can keep up with Coastal Values at: www.twitter.com/coastalvalues

If Long Beach had surf, would more people visit?

Image from Surfline.

The obvious answer to this question is yes. The more challenging question is how many people would come to surf. Predicting how many people would come to visit Long Beach to surf would likely depend on the quality of the surf and how often the surf was good.

The Long Beach Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation has a long running campaign to "Sink the Breakwater and Restore the Shore"



As part of their campaign they convinced the City of Long Beach to do a feasibility study of the breakwater removal. Part of that study was an economic analysis of the benefits to tourism resulting from improved water quality, beach conditions & surfing.

To better understand how the surfing would improve and how many surfers might visit, the Chapter contracted with Sean Collins at Surfline (a leading surf forecasting site) to use their models, historical surf records and expertise to predict how many days of surf Long Beach would see, how many good days and how many poor days and then estimated how many surfers would show up to surf it.

You can read this very interesting report here.

So what's the conclusion? Based on this approach, Collins estimates that restoring surf to Long Beach could result in over 394,000 annual visits.

This visitation estimate is being fed into an economic analysis that should be available in mid-July. We'll report on that when its available.

Duke Kahanamoku surfing in Long Beach before the breakwater was installed.

New York Surfers Defy Surfer Stereotype

Photo from: Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

A recent article from the NY Times about surfer's objections of an offshore LNG facility in New York had this quote:

“Our community is both much bigger and far more diverse than people give it credit for,’’ said Chris Wade, the chairman of the Surfrider Foundation’s New York City chapter and one of the organizers of Saturday’s protest. “The average outsider who doesn’t surf has stereotypical ideas of who a surfer is and where they live and we defy those stereotypes here in New York.”

Chris is right and he's also a classic example of someone who defies the surfer stereotype - he was an infantry officer in the Marines, he has an Ivy League education, he has a Masters in History from Duke University, he's a teacher and a very active volunteer for the Surfrider Foundation.

He's also not alone and its also not only a phenomenon in New York.

A paper I wrote on the socioeconomics of surfers Trestles in Southern California had similar findings - surfers tend to be fully employed, well educated and earn high incomes. They essential reflect the communities they come from - that probably shouldn't be a surprise.

To help better understand who surfer's are, Surf First has launched a national survey of surfers to better understand their demographics, surfing habitats and economic impacts to coastal communities. You can check out the survey here.

Impacts of Coastal Development on Surfing

Nicolas Corne recently published an interesting paper entitled, "The Implications of Coastal Protection and Development on Surfing" in the Journal of Coastal Research (reference and link below).

The paper is noteworthy because it is one of the only attempts to quantify if coastal structures (groins, jetties, seawalls, breakwaters) are good or bad for surfing. This is common topic of debate within the Surfrider Foundation because we typically fight against coastal structures because they tend to alter coastal process, harm beaches and can destroy surf spots. On the other hand we are aware that many surfing areas are the result of shoreline structures (many of which have still have other negative consequences). This is especially true on the East Coast of the US where there are few natural reefs to make surf spots.

Not too surprisingly this paper finds that coastal protection structures do both, but with the bad out weighing the good for the projects analyzed. Here are some of the other notable elements of the paper.

• Because physically measuring the physical features of a surfing wave is extremely challenging (here is one attempt at Pleasure Point in Santa Cruz), Corne relies on user surveys to guage perceptions on the change in quality and crowds.
  

• It was found that crowds decreased when wave quality decreased as expected, but surprisingly there were no cases were it was reported that the crowd increased when the surf improved. As suggested this has a lot to do with the proximity of substitute sites.

• The results show that seawalls, emergent break waters and beach fill tend to reduce wave quality, where as jetties tended to improve wave quality. The "other categorey and "combo" projects showed mixed results.

This paper had a number of short comings that challenge its validity that put it at risk of being a formalization of surfing anecdotes.

• The survey frame is largely Surfrider Foundation members who may have a bias against shoreline structures that is reflective of the organization's beach preservation policy.

• The paper doesn't say how many people were surveyed so its impossible to know if the responses are based on one persons opinion or if the results had a wide variation in responses (error bars)

• The survey asks questions about some places that were altered 10 to 15 years ago (e.g the Wedge in Newport Beach) and it begs the question whether survey respondents are able to truly recall changes in surf quality or if crowds have changed for reasons other than wave quality (the author does acknowledge this shortcoming).

This paper represents a first attempt to quantify the impacts of coastal protection on surfing, which is an admirable research topic. I believe using crowds as a proxy for surf quality is a sound means of estimating changes over time and is something that warrants further research.

Attendance data at surf spots is essential information to better understand the economics, protection and management of surfing areas but has proven difficult to find.

Reference:

CORNE, N.P., 2009. The implications of coastal protection and development on surfing. Journal of Coastal Research, 25(2), 427–434. West Palm Beach (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.

Download it here.


Thanks to Linwood Pendleton from the Coastal Ocean Values Center for his comments on this post.