In the last couple of days, there have been two authoritative listings of the best beaches in the United States - One from TripAdvisor and the other from Dr. Beach.

Each list contains 10 beaches, and out of these 20 beaches, only 2 are from California - La Jolla Cove in TripAdvisor’s list and Coronado Island in Dr. Beach’s list.

Meanwhile, beaches in Hawaii and Florida, the other two coastal tourist hot-spots, are amply represented in both lists.

If you’re wondering why, it’s probably not because of any ingrained bias against the West Coast, but because of scientific and environmental issues. To learn more, you’ll have to go through Heal the Bay’s 19th annual 2008-09 report of 502 beaches in California.

The reports say that while the Golden state’s beaches earn high water-quality marks, $1 million in state funding was eliminated for weekly beach monitoring, so many county health departments have eliminated or cut back on critical sampling and testing.

“With summer coming, the state has made assurances that it will start restoring funding to beach monitoring programs, but there is no firm date,” said Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay. “Until then, swimmers in many locations in San Diego and Ventura are truly swimming at their own risk.”

Which is why these Los Angeles, OC and San Diego beaches, some of which have previously been ranked as the best in the U.S., failed to show up at the top of the list this year.

In fact, let’s forget the rankings, and focus on the money. California’s ocean-dependent economy is valued at $43 billion, and a 100 million people visit the state’s beaches each year. By slashing $1million, all of this, and the associated jobs, are put at risk.

Hopefully, neanderthal bureaucrats in Sacramento will get some sense knocked into them, and release the funding for the beach monitoring to continue.

Photo by ilovemypit via flickr (creative commons).

Posted on May 23rd, 2009 by Thomas
Filed under: California