Laguna Group Hits the Beach in Protest Over Sewage Spills

A small group of Laguna Beach residents and surfers, angry over repeated sewage spills that have fouled the beaches throughout the summer, picketed at Main Beach on Thursday afternoon to demand that city officials take immediate action.

In the wake of a 9,000-gallon raw sewage spill that closed a 2,000-foot stretch of Laguna Beach shoreline on Tuesday morning, about a dozen activists and beach-goers called on the city to stop the spills permanently.

“We’re just trying to make a statement to everybody who wants clean beaches,” said Marielle Leeds, a city recreation commissioner. “The fact that the beach is closed is itself a big statement.”

Laguna Beach city officials admit that they are stymied by the rash of sewage spills but deny that they are guilty of inaction.

Mayor Robert F. Gentry noted that the council on Tuesday night ordered City Manager Kenneth C. Frank to hire an electrical contractor to design and install an early warning system that will cost the city about $250,000.

The decision to install the system was spurred by the Tuesday morning spill of 9,000 gallons of raw sewage from the city’s Anita Street pumping station, the seventh such spill this year.

The protest group urged that the city also buy backup generators for each of the 23 city-owned pump stations along the shoreline.

Chris Nelson, a surfer and engineer, said he had contacted officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington because of his frustration with the repeated spills.

“I was out swimming a little while ago, and there was actual fecal matter floating near me,” he said, as members of the group held signs and waved to honking motorists.

“The quality of the water has really degenerated,” Nelson said. “It’s never been so bad. It’s just phenomenal.”

But Gentry pointed out that nine of the last 10 spills from pump stations over the last three years were the result of power failures, and therefore not the city’s fault.

“If there’s any picketing to be done, it should be in front of the Southern California Edison Co.,” Gentry said in a telephone interview before the demonstration.

However, Southern California Edison spokesman Steve Sullivan said that power interruption is normal and that the city should be responsible for ensuring continuous power by installing backup generators.

The city has rejected that idea because the generators are expensive and installing them would require significant modifications to many of the pump stations.

Gentry said that city officials have done everything possible to stem the spills.

“Unless I’m missing something, I can’t see what more we can do,” Gentry said.

Frank said that the early warning system, which could be operating within a month, will consist of a sophisticated network of sensors and lights hooked into the Laguna Beach Police Department and will be monitored by the 24-hour switchboard operator. The system will alert city workers when a pumping station is malfunctioning.

A bid from an as-yet-unnamed electrical contractor to build the system should be ready to present to the council by Oct. 3, Frank said.

The pump stations are located along the beach and are used to pump raw sewage uphill from the beachfront homes to the main sewer line under South Coast Highway, city officials said.

When a pump loses electrical power, the well that collects the sewage fills up and overflows into the surf.

The latest spill closed off 1,000 feet of shoreline both north and south of the Anita Street pump station, Frank said. He expects the beach to reopen either late today or Saturday.

City officials had looked into purchasing emergency generators for the pump stations earlier this year. Only two stations have emergency generators that automatically supply electricity during a power outage.

But Frank said that city engineers rejected that proposal because it would cost almost $1 million, and because it would be difficult to install the bulky emergency generators in the small, concrete sheds that house the pumps and wells.

Still, Frank said, he would prefer to add emergency generators to each pump station if the city had the money.

“We don’t,” he said. The city is already spending $1 million renovating the aging sewer system in South Laguna, where the underground pipes are almost full to capacity and leaking.

“That is where the priority is right now,” Frank said.

Frank defended the decision to only recommend that the city purchase the early warning system, which, he admitted, would not stop all spills.

“You obviously can’t ever have a 100% fail-safe system,” Frank said.

The city has recently purchased a portable generator that could be transported to pump stations that are experiencing power losses. Use of the portable together with the proposed early warning system, Frank said, should enable city officials to catch most pump station problems before before they result in sewage spills.

The city beaches have been plagued by an unusually high number of sewage spills in recent years. A citywide power outage in July caused pump failures in eight locations, resulting in the spill of more than 12,000 gallons of sewage.