BEACHY CLEAN; POLLUTION ON DECLINE AT SANTA MONICA BAY.

Byline: Eric Wahlgren Daily News Staff Writer

When Angelenos hit the beaches over Memorial Day weekend, they can look forward to taking a cooling dip in the second-cleanest water on record in the past seven years, an environmental group announced Thursday.

The waters off 54 out of 61 beaches monitored along Santa Monica Bay received A or B grades for cleanliness between May 1996 and April 1997, according to 

Heal the Bay's seventh annual beach report card.

The only year that local beaches made better grades was 1994, when 56 beaches racked up A's or B's, which translates into slimmer chances that swimmers will become sick with stomach flu, skin rashes or other ailments.

``What normally would be very polluted beaches here in Santa Monica are clean,'' Mark Gold, executive director of the nonprofit Santa Monica-based group, said during a news conference at Will Rogers State Beach in Santa Monica.

This year's cleaner water stems from new efforts to divert storm-drain water into the sewage treatment system and from the fact that the winter yielded less rain than in past years. With less rain, there is less pollution from storm drains spewing into the ocean.

For San Fernando Valley sun-seekers, two particularly popular beaches - Westward and Zuma - each earned an A-plus, which means they had very low levels of three kinds of bacteria measured in the weekly water samples.

Surfrider Beach, a surfing mecca near exclusive Malibu Colony, was given an F for having the dirtiest water during dry weather, a fact that can largely be blamed on discharges from polluted Malibu Lagoon, Gold said.

Anyone swimming at Surfrider and other beaches with bad grades is ``more likely to come down with the stomach flu or upper respiratory illnesses such as colds,'' said Gold, standing near the Santa Monica Canyon storm drain.

Swimmers at these dirty beaches are also more likely to develop a skin rash or an ear infection, said Gold, who holds a doctorate in environmental science.

For surfers, the report card confirms what they already knew from experience about Surfrider.

``I will not go near that water until a treatment plant is built on that lagoon,'' said September Edwards, an employee at Zuma Jay Surfboards in Malibu.

Tempering the mainly good news contained in the beach report card was the fact that beaches monitored during wet weather logged the worst grades in any of the past four years.

Gold said the explanation for the disparity between the dry- and wet-weather grades is an easy one.

A short rainy season meant there were fewer days in the year when storm-drain water carrying everything from pesticides to human sewage flowed into the ocean, he said. But the rainy season was especially wet this past year, resulting in a lot of storm-drain runoff and therefore high bacteria levels on those days, he added.

A monthly version of the report card, which will feature a map of local beaches with grades penned in on top of them, will be posted at select local surf and dive shops and broadcast on the Weather Channel, Gold said.

Heal the Bay generally recommends that swimmers should not come any closer than 100 yards from a storm drain and avoid the water altogether for the first three days after a rainstorm.

Jack Petralia, director of environmental protection for the county's Health Services Department, said the report card is useful because ``it gives people a relative way to look at what beach to go to.''

But Petralia added, ``People have to remember that this is a snapshot of the past and is not necessarily valid today.''

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Photo, map

PHOTO (1 -- color) Beachgoers stroll past the Santa Monica Canyon storm drain in Santa Monica on Thursday.

Tom Mendoza/Daily News

MAP: Beaches make the grade