County Gives Laguna Clean Bill of Health After Big Spill

The ocean off Laguna Beach was reopened to swimmers and surfers Wednesday after Orange County health authorities declared it free of contamination from a one-million-gallon spill of raw sewage last weekend.

The two-day closure ended shortly before 3 p.m. Wednesday after 48 hours of tests found no bacterial contamination along about a one-mile stretch of shoreline from the north end of the city’s Main Beach to Cleo Street on the south, a county water quality expert said.

Mike Wehner, chief of the water quality program for the county’s environmental health division, said the water appeared to be safe for human contact even on Monday, when more than a dozen large signs had been posted, warning people to stay out of the surf.

The spill apparently occurred late Saturday or early Sunday when a pump station on Laguna Canyon Road was knocked out by an electrical failure. The raw sewage, which normally would have flowed to a treatment plant in Aliso Canyon before being released into an 8,000-foot outfall at Aliso Beach, was diverted automatically to an old ocean outfall that extends seaward 3,100 feet from Main Beach.

Outfall Was Bypassed

Although still operable, that outfall was bypassed after 1978 when the Aliso line was completed. It was kept on a stand-by basis for just such an emergency as last weekend’s.

“It’s very lucky it (the old outfall) was available,” said Terry Brandt, Laguna Beach’s assistant city manager for municipal services. “Otherwise, the untreated sewage would have run into an adjacent flood channel and then directly onto the sands at Main Beach.”

Nonetheless, the sewage treatment system has been corrected to prevent a similar spill, authorities said Wednesday.

Brandt said the pump station, which handles about half the city’s waste waters, is the only one of several connected to the old outfall.

The problem with the pump station was discovered shortly before noon Sunday, but the spill went unreported until Monday, authorities said.

Ray Miller, general manager of the South Coast Water District, said the delay occurred when a weekend workman who discovered the electrical problem could see no evidence of a spill at the site. He corrected the problem but was unaware that sewage had been diverted to the Main Beach outfall, and he didn’t speak to his supervisor until Monday.

Miller said the power failure also knocked out an automatic warning signal at the pump station.

“The station has been completely over hauled now to prevent a recurrence of the incident,” Miller said Wednesday. “It had been engineered differently from other stations on the line, and it now conforms with the rest.”

The county’s Wehner said no action is contemplated against the water district because of the delayed report.

“The water district has a very good record of reporting even the smallest incidents,” he said. “They have always been extremely cooperative.”

Karen Adams, a public health nurse in the county’s epidemiology office, said about two dozen persons had telephoned for information after the spill. She said three complained of sore throats and one of diarrhea.

But Dr. Thomas J. Prendergast, the county’s chief epidemiologist, said he would have expected reports of “many more incidents of diarrhea if persons had been affected by contaminated waters.

“Even the very first samples of ocean water taken in the area Monday showed essentially normal conditions,” Prendergast said Wednesday.

Beach attendance Wednesday was very light, but Lifeguard Lt. Mike Dwinell said there was no way of knowing if reports of the spill had kept people away.