"I think one of the greatest advantages of Earth Day is it creates
a heightened sense of awareness" of environmental issues," said Ken
Kramer, superintendent of Crystal Cove State Park.
Environmentalism has had surges of popularity and shifts of focus,
but the local community's interest in having a clean environment has
grown, activists said.
In the early days of organized environmentalism, activists
targeted point source pollution, which comes from an identifiable
source such as a sewage plant or a factory, said Nancy Gardner,
president of the Newport Beach chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.
Neither the activists nor the water regulatory agencies knew what
to do about pollution that was harder to trace, she said.
"When [Surfrider] first started, you'd say something like urban
runoff and you'd get a blank look," Gardner said.
Newport Beach environmentalist Jack Skinner said since he and his
wife got involved in promoting water quality in 1983, people have
began understanding the harm pollutants cause in water.
"There was, at that time, no concern about health effects from
swimming in water contaminated by human waste," Skinner said.
At the time, people were focusing on how contaminants were hurting
organisms that live at the bottom of the sea, but the public at large
didn't see that as relating to them, he said.
When they realized pollution could make people sick when they used
the water, that made them want to do something about it, Skinner
Now, people have made a variety of efforts to improve water
quality as well as other environmental issues, environmentalists
The city of Newport Beach has made an effort to be environmentally
friendly, Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff said, citing the more than
20 natural gas or hybrid vehicles in the city fleet. The city also is
looking at new technologies to treat runoff before it reaches the
ocean, he said.
The public as a whole is also more aware, Kramer said.
"Education is an ongoing effort, but we do see a more
sophisticated and well-versed public here now on environmental
issue," Kramer said. "People seem to get that if you pollute across
the street, it ends up in the ocean, and I don't think it was that
way 20 years ago."
But big challenges still face the Newport-Mesa community and
Orange County, Gardner said, especially in terms of population growth
and people's dependence on cars. But measurable progress has been
made. In some cases, legislation has been passed that forces people
to take better care of the environment.
"I would still say if you look at what we accomplished since the
first Earth Day there's some very strong legislation that wasn't
there before and locally there's some very strong regulations that
control water quality," she said. "It doesn't matter if people get it
or not. They're going to have to go along with it."