The cleanliness of beach water will continue to be monitored since the County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to pay for a scaled-down version of the program at its March 24 meeting. Supervisor Greg Cox urged the board to fork out $150,000 to monitor beach water from April 1 to Oct. 31 since the state cut off money to counties for testing due to the freezing of Prop. 13 funding. In 2000, voters had approved Prop. 13 to sell $1.97 billion in bonds for clean water purposes. The county will only sample water at 19 shoreline sites weekly instead of the previous 57 sites when the state funded $302,000 for the program. The county chose specific sites for continued testing where bacteria levels had exceeded state standards in the past, as well as ones that are popular and used most often. Along Mission Bay, the county will test water for total coliform, fecal coliform and enterococci at six sites: Tecolote (playground watercraft area), Leisure Lagoon, Visitors Center (shoreline), De Anza Cove (swim area), Campland and Bonita Cove eastern shore. In Pacific Beach, water testing will continue at Tourmaline. In Ocean Beach, the county will test at the San Diego River outlet or Dog Beach. In La Jolla, the county will sample water at La Jolla Cove and Torrey Pines (Penasquitos Lagoon outlet). Along San Diego Bay, water will be monitored at Shelter Island and Tidelands Park (Coronado bayside). “Environmental health executives have analyzed the data and concluded with confidence that reduced testing will still meet the threshold required to protect the public health,” wrote Cox in a March 16 letter to the board urging members to fund the program. Once the state releases funding for the beach water monitoring, the county plans to reevaluate the program to determine whether to return to testing 57 sites or continue its abridged version of only monitoring the most polluted and popular spots. The county cannot accept all the responsibility for the beach water monitoring program, Cox stated in his letter to the board. He said the county must “engage the coastal cities, the Unified Port of San Diego and agencies that discharge wastewater in discussions leading to development of a formula for shared funding responsibility.” County Supervisor Pam Slater-Price had originally said the board would not take from its general fund to pay for the program. Last issue the supervisor told the Beach & Bay Press “We can’t afford to just continue to absorb [the state’s] bad debt,” and that the county “will have to let [beach water monitoring] go by the wayside if [the state doesn’t] fund it.” However, Slater-Price has since been reassured that the state would return the funding, pending the sale of the bond, after Cox traveled to Sacramento to discuss the issue with the State Water Resources Control Board. “We don’t see it as a backfill but more as a bridge loan in order to not miss a window of opportunity,” Slater-Price said. “Spring break is here, the weather is warming up and everyone is heading to the beach.”