Long Beach's Sea Water Quality Greatly Improves

Heal the Bay, which grades 447 beaches for their water quality and has long placed Long Beach among the region's worst, gave the city's waters high marks.

the Los Angeles Times reports.

Read Heal the Bay's full "2011 End of Summer Beach Report Card" here. And click here to see conditions at individual beaches in Long Beach and elsewhere in California. (Hint: Conditions at the Alamitos Bay shore float are still not so great.)

A notable 100% of Long Beach sites that are monitored got A or B grades this summer. Fairly, Heal the Bay noted that Long Beach is pounded by upstream pollution from other communities coming down the Los Angeles River (the city says it also arrives from the San Gabriel River).

"Long Beach...has shown determination to improving beach water quality," Heal the Bay said in a statement about its testing. "It has conducted numerous source tracking studies and implemented several successful mitigation projects, most notably at the heavily impaired Colorado Lagoon.

Cabrillo Beach across the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, scored poorly and "the harborside beach near the restrooms has earned F grades the past eight summers," the report said. "The city of Los Angeles has completed several improvement projects totaling $15 million without much luck."

Orange County, where many of Belmont Shore's surfers surf, had 94% of its beaches earning an A grade. Even Dana Point’s Doheny Beach improved from a C rating to an A.