Beach Closure by Sewage Spill Riles Residents

DANA POINT — Inge Blair and her two children left Los Angeles on Wednesday morning promising to take their Austrian visitor to “this really nice beach in Orange County.”

But when they arrived at Doheny State Beach here, it was not exactly as pristine as they remembered. Instead, they encountered county notices warning them against entering the contaminated water. The Blairs grabbed their folding chairs, Boogie Board and picnic basket and left in search of another beach.

For the last two weeks, hundreds of visitors have been turned away as county health officials closed a three-quarter-mile stretch of the beach after 50,000 gallons of raw sewage flowed into the ocean.

Officials with the Moulton Niguel Water District said the pollution was caused when heavy rains burst an underground clay pipe in the Mission Viejo area. The sewage eventually bubbled up into San Juan Creek and was washed into the ocean.

The closure of the state beach, among the most popular campgrounds in Orange County, has angered surfers, local residents and beach lovers.

“It’s like someone flushing a giant toilet down here,” said Bill Barnes of the Doheny Longboard Assn., a local surfing organization. “We’re getting tired of pollution and closed beaches. It’s running wild and no one’s doing anything.”

Throughout the day, some surfers and swimmers ventured into the water, keeping lifeguards and park rangers busy. A lifeguard who declined to be identified said violators are issued warnings but so far no one has been cited.

“You couldn’t pay me to walk” near the water, the lifeguard said. “But some people don’t care. If it moves, they want to ride it.”

Officials of the Orange County Public Health Department said violators risk contracting hepatitis, salmonellosis and ear and eye infections if they swim in the water.

“We’ve made a decision to close the beach on the side of public health and safety,” said Robert Merryman, director of the county’s environmental health office. “We simply hope that people refrain from going into the water until it is safe to do so.”

Local surfers said similar incidents have forced the closure of the beach several times during the last two years. David Skelly, a coastal engineer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, said regular tests on water samples during the last year have shown high and unsafe levels of bacteria at Doheny.

Skelly, co-director of the Surfrider Foundation in Huntington Beach, said local surfers and lifeguards have complained of contracting infections and sores on their skin.

“It’s a chronic problem up there,” Skelly said. “Any time you have a little rain, it’s going to worsen it.”

Under normal conditions, the beach would have been reopened but runoff from the recent rainstorms is still gushing down the normally dry San Juan Creek, bringing more pollutants to the ocean, Merryman said.

He said the water district will not be fined for the pollution.

“They acted very promptly and appropriately,” Merryman added. “It would be analogous to someone coming home and finding a water leak and have someone come up and give you a citation for it.”

Merryman said public health workers are conducting daily tests of the water and hope to have the beach open by Friday.

Some visitors who saw the warning signs Wednesday decided to stay to play football, volleyball or simply lie out in the sun.

“It’s a tease being so close to the water and not getting to go in on a beautiful day like this,” said William Harrison, 20, of San Juan Capistrano.

“This is such a waste,” added 34-year-old Richard Driscoll of Mission Viejo. “It’s ruined. We have to do something about people messing up pretty places like this.”