Efforts to Mend Ruptured Pipe Halted by Storm : Pollution: Heavy surf delays work on sewage pipe. Contamination from two spills keeps 20 miles of coastline closed from Mexico to San Diego River.

An advancing Pacific storm expected to bring rain and heavy surf spelled more trouble for contaminated San Diego County beaches Sunday and shut down efforts to repair the sewage outfall pipe.

Health officials said the contamination off Ocean Beach was decreasing, but they were concerned that the storm might reverse that trend.

As storm waves broke over the deck of a repair barge Sunday night, workers were airlifted away by helicopter and the barge was towed into San Diego Bay to anchorage.

A 20-mile stretch of coastline from the Mexican border to the San Diego River remained closed Sunday due to high bacteria counts from two sewage spills--an undetermined amount of raw sewage flowing down the Tijuana River into U.S. waters and 180 million gallons daily of treated sewage spewing from the broken Point Loma sewage outfall pipe, according to Ruth Covill, spokeswoman for the San Diego County Health Services Department.

Repair work on the sewage pipeline began Saturday, and 1-ton boulders were being dumped at the site of the main break Sunday in an attempt to shore up supports around the pipe, which has been spewing sewage into 35-foot-deep water offshore since Feb. 2, according to Roger Frauenfelder, deputy city manager.

With increasing surf and heavy rain, repair efforts were suspended at 6 p.m., the workmen were evacuated, and the barge was towed to a sheltered mooring at the Naval Ocean Systems Center, Frauenfelder said. The barge crews will resume 12-hour work shifts when the weather permits, he said.

The partially treated sewage has been streaming into the ocean from the ruptured pipe for eight days, and repairs are expected to take six to eight weeks and cost $10 million, city officials estimated.

Covill said coliform bacteria tests taken by San Diego city and county teams along the shoreline during the weekend indicated that the contamination in the southern part of the county affected by the untreated Mexican sewage remained extremely high in Imperial Beach and Coronado, but bacteria counts appeared to be back to normal in the Ocean Beach area north of Point Loma.

If final test results bear out the preliminary weekend bacteria readings, the quarantine of waters off Ocean Beach may be lifted, Covill said, “unless this storm comes in and pushes the sewage contamination northward again.”

U.S. Weather Service forecasts call for rain, winds and heavy surf with breakers reaching 10-foot heights by tonight.

The more serious spill of untreated sewage flowing down the Tijuana River was caused by the shutdown of the Tijuana sewage treatment plant Friday after runoff from an earlier storm overloaded the Mexican facility.

Covill said the Tijuana plant remained closed Sunday and an undetermined amount of sewage continued to flow down the river on the U.S. side of the border, where waves and tidal action moved it northward along county beaches. Weekend bacteria counts indicated that there has been no letup in the contamination from the Mexican sewage.