COUNTYWIDE : Huntington Reopens Some of Its Beaches

A 4 1/2-mile stretch of shoreline in Huntington Beach was reopened Thursday to surfers, swimmers and strollers after tests on dozens of sand samples showed that the beaches, once contaminated by the Feb. 7 oil spill, are now safe, officials declared.

Beaches from Magnolia Avenue north to Golden West Street were opened, as was Bolsa Chica State Beach from the main lifeguard headquarters north to Warner Avenue, officials said.

A half-mile stretch from Golden West to the Bolsa Chica lifeguard offices--an area known as the Huntington bluffs--remained closed for further cleanup. Many of the rocks at the base of the bluffs were coated with oil, and workers are using a hot seawater solution to scour them clean.

Miles of Orange County shoreline were fouled when 394,000 gallons of oil spilled after the tanker American Trader punctured its hull on its anchor.

Biological tests on more than 264 beach samples taken from the newly opened shoreline found that the average level of petroleum hydrocarbons--potentially harmful to the skin--was about 30 parts per million, well below the 100-parts-per-million standard set by state and local health officials.

Favorable test results were also announced for beaches from Corona del Mar State Beach south to Crystal Cove State Beach, both of which have been open for some time but had not been tested for toxins.

The last major stretch of still-closed shore runs from Magnolia Avenue in Huntington Beach south to Newport Pier. The area includes the Santa Ana River jetties and a series of rock jetties in Newport Beach, all severely damaged by the spill and still being cleaned. Officials said it will be at least a week before the public ban on that stretch of beach is lifted.

“About 50% of the cleanup on those rock jetties is complete,” said Huntington Beach lifeguard Capt. Bill Richardson.

As a precaution, Richardson said, county health officials have issued a public warning not to eat any shellfish--mussels, crabs or lobsters--taken from local waters until tests are conducted to determine that they are safe. Those tests are under way, Richardson said.

At a press conference Thursday near the city’s pier, Huntington Beach Mayor Thomas J. Mays predicted that ending the 3-week-old beach ban will boost downtown business. But he cautioned that the cleanup is not over and said: “We are still in a state of emergency. . . . We will not be satisfied until the danger has passed.”

Mays was referring to the Santa Ana River jetties, where cleanup workers are expected to remain at least through early next week, scrubbing the oil-fouled rocks leading to a channel that feeds a saltwater marsh inhabited by at least one endangered species of bird.

After Mays officially declared the beach open at 2 p.m., surfers and bathers ran into the ocean south of the historic pier.

As surfer Natalie Steele, 16, headed into the water, she said area surfers have waited anxiously for the fabled wave-riding beach to reopen.

“We’ve been having to go up north or down south,” she said. “This is just a killer because we finally get to surf in our own place.”