October 13th Storm Sewage San Mateo County

kevinkan · Joined: 07 Jun 2001 Posts: 1661 Location: San Francisco

Also, be sure to check the dates on the water quality tests on the links above. They don't test every day, so a warning or green light for your spot may not reflect the current conditions.

The websites aren't that well laid out... scroll down to the bottom and pick the beach you want from the drop down menu for a full report.

pirireis · Joined: 18 Jul 2009 Posts: 177

I wonder if the HMB contemenation sign should be taken seriously during storm sailing? Everytime I go I have this debate with myself whether to sail or not due to the sewage run off during the rain. Sometime I sail and sometimes I chicken out especially if I have a cut on my feet.

Epenrose · Joined: 05 Nov 1997 Posts: 402

I would presume that if you avoid major urban centers you minimize the effects.

I tend to sail North is storms, places like Bolinas. Small populations and would have pits that are collected and not causing run off, which I believe is half the problem.

I would think HMB and Ocean Beach are probably pretty bad as they are so close to urban centers, especially OB.

kirk · Joined: 10 Apr 2000 Posts: 158

victor · Joined: 03 Aug 1998 Posts: 581

besides the occasional raw sewage discharges just the runoff from the streets in urban areas after an early storm is probably pretty bad. away from urban areas you have pig and dairy farms. even "pristine" tomales bay is said to have high levels of mercury from on old mine nearby.

we all know how poluted the delta is. the colombia river can't be much cleaner if not worse.

wtf? most of us sail it anyway.

i remember when a sewer line across a creek upstream from a nearby sailing site broke. the first day there were signs up warning to stay out. by the next day they had all been torn down and it was business as usual.

SWE106 · Joined: 14 Feb 2005 Posts: 264 Location: San Mateo

keycocker · Joined: 10 Jul 2005 Posts: 3598

I double that. Thanks for all the great posts too.I always read your stuff.

mac · Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 9:40 pm Post subject:

How do we know that it is safe to windsurf? I’ve run this question down a bit, and have some suggestions. First, go to the State Water Resources Control Board site, here: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/data_maps/index.shtml There are two buttons that will take you further, and will allow you to customize your own inquiries. First, the “My Water Quality Portal” will allow you to zoom in on the sites that you generally windsurf, or surf, and if you poke around a bit you can find out whether there are water quality problems at the site, and whether or not things are getting worse. Second, the button on sanitary sewer overflows allows you to look and see if there were any recent overflows, and the volume. So if it is a windy day, you can pick a site that hasn’t got either a history of overflows, or any recent events.
Yeah, I know this isn’t real time, but I think I can get it there. I spoke with the tech folks at the State Board yesterday, and told them that there are windsurfer, kiters, and surfers out there that will use this information in real time. The Board for the Bay area requires notice of any spill within two hours. The tech challenge is to get that notice to be linked so that it shows up as a crawler on the bottom of the iwindsurf page for the site. That will get us pretty close to real time. Check it out, use it, send feed back to the programmers at the State Board or to me, and I’ll see if I can get it improved.
Jim McGrath
San Francisco Regional Board Member/Windsurfer