Just 10 miles off the coast of Los Angeles lurks an environmental disaster over 70 years in the making, which few have ever heard about. That is, until now, thanks to the research of a University of California marine scientist named David Valentine.
Last month, a team of researchers led by scientists from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration completed a two-week survey between Catalina Island and the coast of Palos Verdes of an unknown number of barrels of hazardous chemicals to determine the extent of environmental damage and, potentially, who might be to blame.
The study, which finished last month, included verifying how many barrels sit at the bottom of the ocean containing the toxic chemicals, possibly including Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT.
Lauren Fimbres Wood, Director of Strategic Communications for Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said the survey amassed several terabytes worth of acoustic imagery and the chief scientist Eric Terrill is working to sift through the data to identify the scope and quantity of the debris field targets.
“He is hopeful that in the coming weeks he can provide more accurate updates from the expedition to the media and the public,” Wood said. “But that likely won’t be until the end of the month (April).”
The researchers used two autonomous underwater vehicles to conduct a sonar scan of the sea floor, Wood said. Their goal was to detect debris they can identify as barrels in a larger area of the sea floor than previously possible.
This study was conducted in the wake of a Los Angeles Times story this past October that revealed the discovery of potentially hundreds of thousands of DDT barrels that for decades were dumped off the coast of Southern California. This is significant given the reporting on the DDT superfund site a decade prior suggested that DDT on the ocean floor, transported by sewage pipe off the coast of Palos Verdes had disappeared.
The article detailed the discovery made by scientists working on a different topic of inquiry who decided to look into the issue using a deep-sea robot outfitted with sonar equipment, bright lights and cameras.
A Superfund battle that lasted for decades later exposed Montrose Chemical Corporation’s disposal of toxic waste through sewage pipes that poured into the ocean — but the DDT that was barged out to sea drew comparatively little attention. This happened even though there were records kept for years that documented the dumping of DDT waste off the Los Angeles coast and it was well known back in the 1980s by local marine biologists. It is curious to Raymond Wells, Ph.D., a retired marine biology professor who lives in San Pedro. “We all knew about the DDT barrels back in the 1980s,” he said.
Yet, at the depth that they were discovered, about 1,500 meters, “I’m not sure how much the toxins will enter the food chain,” Wells said.
Reporters pored over shipping logs which showed that thousands of barrels of acid sludge laced with this synthetic chemical were being boated out to a site near Catalina and dumped into the deep ocean every month for years after World War II.
Regulators reported in the 1980s that the men in charge of DDT waste disposal sometimes took shortcuts, dumping it closer to shore. When the barrels were too buoyant to sink on their own, one report said, the crews simply punctured them with hatchets.
A California Regional Water Quality Control Board scientist heard rumors of the dumping of DDT barrels into the ocean in the early 1980s. The scientist investigated by asking to review Montrose shipping logs and confirmed the rumors to be true. But nothing came of the reports. And yet, Professor Wells learned about the barrels of DDT back in graduate school. “We all were aware that DDT had been dumped off the coast,” he said recently.
David Valentine, professor of microbiology and geochemistry at UC Santa Barbara, found the reports more than a decade later and was intrigued enough to conduct a study using a remotely operated vehicle and discovered 60 to 100 barrels in a small survey area about 3,000 feet below the surface.
It was not until they published the first paper describing the site and other aspects of their reconnaissance mission in 2019, followed by an investigative story in October 2020 in the Los Angeles Times, that people started to take notice.
Random Lengths News first reported on the DDT and PCB pollution in February 1986 and many times subsequently. We find it curious that only now does this long ignored problem surface in the news as if they just discovered the Titanic.
