20-Mile Quarantine on Day 7 of Spill : Pollution: EPA suggests bleaching coastline but state regulators are concerned that the method would kill the entire near-shore environment.

Dangerous counts of bacteria, in some cases 1,100 times the legal limit, continued to pollute the coastline near the international border Saturday, as the county’s sewage crisis entered its seventh day.

Twenty miles of coastline, extending from the mouth of the Tijuana River to the San Diego River in the neighborhood of Ocean Beach, remained under quarantine. Lifeguards all along the closed coastline were ushering swimmers and surfers out of the water, authorities said.

County health officials said raw sewage, as well as some garbage, was washing up on the shores of Imperial Beach near the border, where the stench of contaminated water was evident for miles.

At a morning press conference near the shores of Sunset Cliffs, which is in the contaminated area, scores of surfers and ocean lovers gathered to assail politicians and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which is urging San Diego to disinfect its effluent with chlorine.

“The Washington bureaucrats now want to bleach all of our beaches,” Assemblyman Mike Gotch (D-San Diego) said angrily. “Who the hell is in charge? Who the hell is in charge?”

Ruth Covill, a spokeswoman for the San Diego County Department of Health Services, said bacterial counts 28 times the legal limit were recorded Saturday at the Hotel Del Coronado and that five people had called the health department complaining of gastrointestinal infections.

Health authorities said the contamination could cause a variety of water-borne diseases ranging from gastrointestinal disorders to dysentery, typhoid and hepatitis.

Covill said that, at the request of state health authorities, a quarantine was placed Saturday on all fish and marine life in the 20-mile area extending from the border to the San Diego River and three miles out to sea. She warned against eating shellfish, in particular.

San Diego’s spill of treated sewage was first detected Sunday night, when 180 million gallons a day of effluent began streaming into the ocean 3,150 feet from the city’s sewage treatment plant on the Point Loma Peninsula.

San Diego’s advanced primary system of sewage treatment removes 75% to 80% of the solids before pumping the effluent through an underwater pipe into the ocean. The plant serves 1.7 million of the county’s residents.

Heavy rains Thursday forced the closure of a binational pump station that sent 12 million gallons of Tijuana’s raw sewage--normally diverted to San Diego’s system--gushing into the ocean.

San Diego City Manager Jack McGrory said the Tijuana diversion system was “turned back on” late Saturday, which should ease the crisis for a while--at least until today, when another in a series of winter storms is expected to delay repair efforts once again.

San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor led a delegation of politicians and news reporters on a tour Saturday of the 100-foot-by-300-foot barge that was put in place Friday night to begin lifting sections of the reinforced concrete pipe, 500 feet of which is damaged.

The pipe, each section 25 feet long and weighing 30 tons, may take until early April to repair. Crews began working Saturday by using underwater photographers to film interior and exterior shots of the pipe. Actual lifting of 600-ton pieces of the pipe won’t begin until later this month.

Ballast rock was imported Saturday from Santa Catalina Island to stabilize sections of the pipe leading from the Point Loma treatment plant to the spill itself. The treated sewage was clearly evident Saturday, in swirling, boiling currents that hundreds of sea gulls were feeding on.

“This type of repair is fairly complex,” said project manager Marc Stearns, who works for Manson Construction & Engineering, the Long Beach firm sharing the joint venture of repairing the pipe with a Boise, Ida., company. “There’s a lot of precision work that has to be done. You can imagine trying to place rock close to a pipe without damaging the pipe but still close enough to protect the pipe.”

Stearns conducted a press conference on the barge Saturday afternoon that was also attended by City Councilman Ron Roberts and Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego).

The rupture occurred only three-quarters of a mile from Point Loma and about a mile north of Cabrillo National Monument, at a depth of 35 feet. The outfall pipe normally carries effluent 2.2 miles offshore to a depth of 220 feet.

The pipe had never failed since being installed in 1963, and officials continued to blame the break Saturday on what they called “natural, external” forces caused by settlement on the ocean floor, combined with heavy wave action during recent low tides.

Political bickering has marked the days since the sewage began spilling.

“The mayor doesn’t understand the sewage problem--never has, never will,” said Brian Bilbray, a member of the county board of supervisors. “Too often, the politicians around here care only about getting elected, not about the quality of life in San Diego. They’re supposed to be responsible, but they’re not. How can we turn to such people for leadership?

“We also have to stand up to the EPA and say, ‘We don’t want your chlorine and your methods that harm the environment.’ ”

O’Connor responded that Bilbray had actually “stood in the way” of efforts to install a more sophisticated treatment system and blamed him for politicizing a controversy that led to San Diego agreeing to treat 12 million gallons a day of raw sewage from Tijuana.

“I wish Supervisor Bilbray would become part of the solution rather than someone’s attack dog,” O’Connor said.

Asked whose attack dog, O’Connor said, “I don’t know--but somebody’s, obviously.”

Both Bilbray and Susan Golding, chairwoman of the board of supervisors and a mayoral candidate here, have criticized O’Connor and other city officials, saying they ignored warnings about the condition of the pipe that led to the spill.

The several hundred people who gathered at the foot of Ladera Street for the morning press conference blamed the problem on elected officials as a whole and said the next fight would be with the federal EPA for its insistence that San Diego disinfect the effluent with chlorine.

“They want to destroy our environment,” said Mike Bell, 43, a member of an Ocean Beach surfing club. “Well, we’re going to stand up to the EPA and tell them they just can’t do it. Who are they to tell us what to do?

“Surfing is a big part of my life. My wife looked at me this morning, and said, ‘Oh, my God! How am I going to put up with you and our son not being able to surf for God knows how long. I want this to stop!’ ”

State regulators share concerns about chlorinating the sewage, saying it could bleach the entire near-shore environment.

“In other words, it dies . . . “ said John Grant, a marine biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game, who monitors oil spill prevention and response. “It’s sort of like in Vietnam, where they had to destroy a village in order to save it.”

San Diego authorities received $10 million in aid Friday from state and federal sources. The EPA gave the city $5.5 million toward the estimated $10 million needed for repairs. But the EPA laid down four “recommended” actions, one of which was disinfecting the effluent with chlorine.

“You’re here like I am,” Assemblyman Gotch told the crowd at the oceanfront press conference. “You’re angry and confused. You want to know what’s going on. Part of what’s happening is that for years we’ve subsidized developers while neighborhoods and parks--and people--have taken a back seat to big money.

“Developers have made this problem a lot worse.”

County health official Covill said Saturday that readings of fecal coliform bacteria near the spill site itself, and at the tip of the Point Loma Peninsula 2 miles south, were down from 400,000 coliform per 100 milliliter of water to 210,000. She said the legal limit of such bacteria is 1,000 coliform per 100 milliliter of water.

She said readings posted late Saturday in Imperial Beach, however, were at 1.1 million coliform per milliliter of water, which health authorities consider disastrously high. But readings as far north as Pacific Beach, just south of La Jolla, were as low as 20, “which is very good news,” she said.

Covill said that ocean currents were moving the effluent north, but “a line of storms expected to hit (today) will be coming from the Bering Strait” and send it swirling south.

“And as to where that leaves us . . . I just don’t know,” she said.