Sewage Spill Fouls Streets, O.C. Beaches

A 250,000-gallon sewage spill Wednesday at a regional treatment pant in Fountain Valley flooded several major streets, prompted health authorities to quarantine an eight-mile stretch of beach and caused raw effluent to cascade into basement dressing rooms at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

Authorities at the Fountain Valley Treatment Plant said they were unsure what caused sewage to begin backing up at the sprawling processing facility, sending waste sloshing out of manholes to cover nearby streets at 5 p.m.

All systems at the plant were back to normal an hour later, but the sewage had by then spilled into storm drains leading to the Santa Ana River and flowed into the ocean, said Blake Anderson, technical services director for the Sanitation District of Orange County, operators of the plant.

“The good news is there’s no sewage spilling right now,” Anderson said Wednesday night. “But we’re baffled. We’re still trying to locate the cause of the backup.”

Orange County officials, concerned about potential health problems, shut down a stretch of beach fanning out from the mouth of the Santa Ana River. Beaches between Newport Pier on the south and Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach on the north will be posted with signs warning against swimming in the ocean, Anderson said.

Anticipated rain and storm-driven surf should help dissipate the sewage, and the quarantine will probably last only a few days and no longer than a week, he predicted.

Health officials will begin taking bacterial counts of the surf beginning today to determine when the beaches should be reopened, Anderson said. County health officials could not be reached for comment on the sewage spill.

“It will be a health hazard for anyone who swims the ocean off the quarantine area,” Anderson said. “People should stay out of the water until the health department reopens those sections of beach.”

Sgt. Ron Manda of the Fountain Valley police said officers began receiving reports shortly after 5:30 p.m. of flooding on several streets surrounding the sewage plant, located just south of the San Diego Freeway and west of the Santa Ana River.

Numerous motorists plowed through huge pools of sewage stretching from sidewalk to sidewalk along Euclid Street and Ellis Avenue. Sewage also poured from manholes just across the river from the plant, flooding a short stretch of California Street.

Police later shut down all three streets for several hours, authorities said, as well as the San Diego Freeway’s southbound exit at Euclid Street.

Anderson said 16 cleanup crews on tanker trucks were dispatched by the sewage plant Wednesday night to wash the effluent down storm drains with a mix of water and disinfectant. Rains should also help wash down the streets. Any remaining sewage puddled on the streets would not not represent a health threat to motorists or residents of surrounding neighborhoods, Anderson said.

Richard Bryant, a spokesman for the Performing Arts Center, said the problem at the plant caused sewage to back up and spew out of floor drains in the concert hall’s basement, which houses more than a dozen dressing rooms.

Center employees had to rush to mop up the flowing sewage and rescue several elaborate costumes for the opera “La Traviata,” which has a performance tonight. Bryant said none of the costumes was damaged and he expects the dressing rooms to dry out in plenty of time for the show.

Workers discovered the effluent cascading from the floor drains about 5:30 p.m., just as they were leaving for the evening. Several maintenance employees used squeegees to push the foul-smelling waste water into a sump that pumped it into the city storm drain.

Within an hour, the sewage crested at about an inch or two, then began to recede, leaving little more than patches of soggy carpet in the dressing rooms.

Although no performance was in progress when the effluent began pumping into the basement, about 50 young children from the Turandot Children’s Choir were practicing at the time.

“It totally stunk really bad,” said Melissa Wyatt Trutz, 11, of Laguna Niguel. “We had to hold our noses.”

Brent Woods, also 11, agreed that “it sure stunk.” The Irvine youth and his friends in the choir had no idea what was happening until they saw a sign in the bathroom that read “Don’t Flush.”