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Volume 8 Issue 282
Santa Monica Daily Press RUNNING FOR RECOGNITION SEE PAGE 15
We have you covered
THE GOOD GRADES ISSUE
ER visits jump at hospital
Water quality at local beaches gets high marks BY KEVIN HERRERA Editor in Chief
like heart enlargement and failure, antiquated medicine and over 300,000 current reported U.S. cases would receive almost no attention, but such is the case for Chagas disease. Until now, that is. One hundred years after Chagas was first discovered, researchers, doctors, scientists, clinicians and others are demanding the spotlight be turned to this disease. Chagas is
ENJOYING THE ENVIRONMENT: According to Heal the Bay, Santa Monica Bay beaches’
SM BAY Swimmers this summer basked in a third consecutive season of excellent water quality, with many local beaches receiving high marks compared to a year ago, according to Heal the Bay’s “End of Summer Beach Report Card,” which was released Wednesday. Santa Monica Bay monitoring locations fared notably better than last summer, exhibiting water quality of 91 percent (A and B) compared to last year’s 86 percent, with some areas, such as the beach just west of Wilshire Boulevard going from an F to an A thanks to an urban runoff filtration and diversion system installed at Palisades Park. Of the 458 beaches along the California coast that were assigned grades from Memorial Day to Labor Day, 92 percent received an A or a B grade during the hightraffic summer season, slightly better than last year, when 91 percent of beaches received high marks. California’s persistent and ongoing low rainfall totals, which limited polluted urban runoff in storm drain systems, played a major role in better water quality. Enhanced infrastructure at several sites, including the Santa Monica Pier and the Temescal Canyon section of Will Rogers State Beach, also led to improved grades, said Mike Grimmer, who manages the environmental watchdog’s Beach Report Card program. There were only 36 locations in the state that received fair-to-poor water quality grades, roughly 8 percent of all graded beaches. Some 21 beaches received failing grades statewide. The Beach Report Card is based on the routine monitoring of beaches from Humboldt County to the Mexican border by local health agencies and dischargers. Water samples are analyzed for bacteria that indicate pollution from numerous sources. The better the grade a beach receives, the lower the risk of illness to ocean users.
SEE DISEASE PAGE 14
water quality performed noticeably better during the summer months, with 91 percent of the monitored locations receiving A or B grades, compared to 86 percent last year.
SEE WATER PAGE 13
BY MELODY HANATANI Daily Press Staff Writer
15TH STREET The Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital built it, and they came. The days have been increasingly busy at the new Nethercutt Emergency Center where visits have jumped by almost 350 patients a month over last year, a spike that hospital officials attribute to the expansion in services offered and improvement in overall efficiency thanks to the state-of-the-art facility. The 16,000 square-foot center opened in July 2007 as the first patient care area in the hospital’s new Southwest Wing, designed with features meant to speed up visits in the ER, including one that links Nethercutt to a laboratory through a pneumatic tube system that leads to faster turnaround time for results. The hospital also launched last year a new fastER SEE ER PAGE 12
Panel tackles pesky disease BY CATHERINE CAIN Special to the Daily Press
BROAD STAGE Few diseases with symptoms
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