Butow believes part of the problem is city officials don't spend any time in the water, yet they want to ensure tourists keep hitting the beach. "It's the Jaws mentality," he says. "They say what we're doing is bad for tourism. Well, fuck me, but all it's going to take is for the son of a Johnnie Cochran to come down here, swim in our waters, get sick and die, and we'll all be paying Johnnie Cochran for the rest of his life."
A THOUSAND SOURCES Wayne Baglin is one official who has spent some time in the water. A former Laguna Beach councilman, current member of the state Regional Water Quality Control Board and chairman of the Aliso Water Management Agency, which manages the region's sewers, Baglin says you can't just target the sewage operators. His logic might sound self-serving. But it also makes sense: major spills occur only a dozen or so times per year, while the creek and beach are polluted constantly and by a hundred, maybe a thousand, small sources contributing to a massive tributary of waste, 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365 days per year.
Baglin believes the answer is to find the source of the pollution up and down the creek and threaten the cities, other government agencies, individuals or whoever is fouling the creek to clean up their acts or face stiff penalties under the federal Clean Water Act. In fact, he has identified much higher levels of pollution at a single storm drain at Aliso Parkway in Laguna Niguel. The drain is used solely by residences built during the past 30 years, and it logs more failing grades than any other spot along the creek-even places where businesses, industries and, yes, even sewage-treatment plants pour into it. Baglin expects total cooperation from the city of Laguna Niguel in discovering the source of the muck and taking care of the problem.
"That's the future," he says. "That will have more impact than the structural changes the Army Corps of Engineers is proposing. Educate everyone in question, and perform minor repairs up and down the creek. . . . I think we now truly have the direction to do something about it."
Baglin says his interest in keeping the ocean clean goes back to 1969, when he bodysurfed in Laguna Beach's Victoria Cove and noticed green slime at the surf line from an old sewage-treatment plant in town. When the plant moved to another location, the slime went with it. "When I called the government officials and told them about it, they told me it didn't exist," he says.
Later, his teenage son and friends skimboarded at Aliso Beach-which is considered one of the planet's premier skimboarding spots-and came home with flu symptoms or infections around bruises and scratches. When Baglin told county officials about it, they urged him to have the teens file reports. "Getting a bunch of teenagers to whine and whimper is hard to do," he says. "But my son did it. And he felt he was just dealing with bureaucrats who didn't really care, so he never did it again."
MAD ABOUT TOWN Walking out to his big blue truck, which is parked somewhat legally in the alley behind the Wahoo's Fish Taco (unofficial headquarters of the local Surfrider chapter) on South Coast Highway, Morris-Smith exchanges greetings in fluent Spanish with a worker who is hosing something off on the joint's Ping-Pong table-sized lawn.
After fetching some papers in his truck, Morris-Smith sums up why he may be risking everything for Laguna's beaches. "My ex-wife couldn't understand it. My sons don't understand it," Morris-Smith says. "I know it sounds corny, but I love this town, man. Not only is this the place where I live, but spiritually, it's also an important place for me. When I get in the water, it's a release. It's sanctuary from the inland madness.
"I've received threatening phone calls-'Who do you think you are by suing the water district, creating problems in your hometown?' This has nothing to do with Surfrider. I'm just a private citizen caring about my town. If they fix stuff up after my suit, great. If they had done it before, I wouldn't have brought the suit."
Tears welling up in his eyes, he concludes: "I love this town. I get up in the morning, and I look out the window and see Catalina, and I think, 'Shit, how can I be mad about anything?'"
