Leaves on trees will start changing colors. Mornings will develop a brisk chill. The holiday spirit will soon fill the air. Keep an eye out, for these are the signs that fall has arrived. September 22nd was officially the first day of fall, and although we Southern Californians know that summer often extends through September…

When it comes to trash, less is usually more. That is unless you are cleaning litter and debris from more than 30,000 catch basins in the City of Los Angeles. Then the sky’s the limit. In the last fiscal year, LA Sanitation removed a whopping 2,160 tons of trash from LA’s catch basins. In those…

Finding the balance between water – its availability, usage and conservation – is a big part of the ongoing conversation here in California. We live in a state with limited water supplies, so finding solutions to our state’s ongoing water challenges is an issue that isn’t going to go away anytime soon. One program that…

Rain barrels are pretty neat. They connect to downspouts and capture water so that it doesn’t run into the storm drains after a heavy rain, ultimately reducing the pollution that makes it into our waterways. The collected water can then be used for various purposes like watering a garden or plants. The LA Stormwater Program…

Mark Gold was the first hire of Heal the Bay after having volunteered for the young organization since 1986. Twenty-five years later, Mark has stepped down as the organization’s president in order to become an associate director of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. Now, we would never try to sum up two decades…

  When the urban runoff from thousands of individual homes in LA comes together, whether it’s from wasteful practices or natural rainfall, it can end up carrying trash, debris, oil, grease, fertilizers and other toxic chemicals, in addition to bacteria and viruses, into our local waterways. Clearly, this has a huge impact on our local…

With the success of last year’s L.A. Rainwater Harvesting Program and the public’s continued interest, we thought an instructional video about how to install a rain barrel at your home would be helpful! Watch our step-by-step guide to find out what materials to use, why choosing the right location is important, how to connect your…

Who among us hasn’t experienced the joy of planting a seed, nurturing the seedling and proudly watching it blossom into a young tree or flowering shrub. And so it goes with ideas. An idea is planted, nurtured and supported, and in time, that idea grows into a movement that positively changes lives and neighborhoods. The…

October marks the beginning of the rainy season here in Los Angeles. It is also the time of year when we celebrate a culturally popular holiday – Halloween. As we enter the wet winter months ahead, Los Angeles faces some potentially frightening challenges. Will the El Niño conditions predicted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric…

You can’t see it but it’s there, hiding out, just waiting for you in the storm drain. It’s not a ghost or a scary monster, although it is certainly frightening. It’s bacteria. Unlike other stormwater pollutants such as oil and litter, bacteria cannot be seen with the naked eye. While most environmental microorganisms are part…