The cleanliness of beach water will continue to be monitored following the County Board of Supervisors’ unanimous vote to pay for a scaled-down version of the program on March 24. Supervisor Greg Cox urged the board to fork out $150,000 to monitor beach water from April 1 to Oct. 31 after 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 spent $302,000 on 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. In La Jolla, the county will sample water at La Jolla Cove and Torrey Pines (Penasquitos Lagoon outlet). 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. 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,” Cox wrote in a March 16 letter to the board urging them to fund the program. Once the state releases funding for the beach water monitoring, the county plans to re-evaluate the program to determine whether to return to testing 57 sites or continue the abridged version. 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.” Cox also wrote that the county would not permanently pick up the slack for the state, and that it is not the county’s business practice to “backfill programmatic funding eliminated by the State.” County Supervisor Pam Slater-Price had originally said the supervisors would not fund the program. However, she has since been reassured that the state would return the funding, pending the sale of the bond, after Cox discussed the issue with the State Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento. “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.”