Spill Stirs Concerns Over the Health of Coastal Sea : Marine life: Most oceanographers believe there is little to fear in the long run, but admit short-term dangers.

Sometime on Sunday afternoon, John Fletcher’s career as a local sea urchin diver came to a dirty, untimely and improbable end.

Floating off the San Diego shoreline in his 20-foot fishing boat, he gazed down into the once-blue ocean waters and saw sickening shades of green and brown. Right there before his eyes--and under his nose--the brown foamy muck and its telltale bathroom odor oozed over the lush kelp forests.

Shaking his head in disgust, the 32-year-old professional diver watched as his clean ocean workplace was slowly being turned into a stinking, seamy septic tank. Right then, he decided to pack in his diving equipment and relocate to someplace cleaner, to Northern California.

“I’m not going to dive into that water, absolutely no way,” he said. “It looks dirty. It’s even got a smell to it. It’s just not natural.”

In the 11 days since the discovery of the broken sewage outfall pipe off Point Loma, nearly 2 billion gallons of partially treated sewage have flushed into a prized ocean environment, closing beaches and upsetting underwater habitats.

Add to that the aftermath of a second river of raw sewage pouring into South Bay waters from Tijuana at the international border, and seafarers like John Fletcher are beginning to fret over possible long-term effects of the devastation man has wrought upon his nearby ocean world.

“It’s like radiation from a nuclear power plant--its effects are invisible, and that makes them all the more scary,” said Bob Shea, president of the urchin producers association of San Diego. “Unlike the Exxon Valdez spill, we can’t see the oil here. The damage is going deep into the ocean where it could become an invisible killer.”

While local marine biologists admit the local ocean waters may be sick, they insist the condition is no long-term illness. And they have few doubts over the ocean’s ability to heal itself soon after the gushing sewage pipe is repaired.

In interviews, many scientists downplayed the long-term effects on sensitive ocean habitats such as the kelp forests and populations of such bottom-dwellers as mollusks, starfish, clams and sea urchins. In fact, one to two years from now, they said, an observer would not be able to recognize there ever was a sewage spill in the shallow waters off Point Loma.

Their biggest helper in nature’s cleanup crew, they say, will be the strong offshore currents that will carry away most of the effluent before it has a chance to cause any long-term damage.

Another plus is the stubbornness of the ocean environment itself.

For a prime example of the irrepressibility of the local ocean habitat, they say, consider the story of the kelp beds. Wiped out during a fierce winter storm four years ago, the kelp forests have rebounded to the point where they are more healthy than anytime in the past 40 years.

“Mother Nature bounces back, bless her heart,” said Patty Vainik, senior marine biologist at the Point Loma waste water treatment plant. “Of course, we don’t want to tempt her any more than we have to, but two months of sewer discharge is not, in the scheme of things, that much time.”

John Grant, a marine biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game’s oil spill prevention and response team, said the only thing different about the recent sewage dumping is that it’s occurring closer to shore.

“The city’s normal method of treating sewage is to pump it 200 feet down, two miles out to sea where no one can see it,” he said. “The point is that this same type of treated sewage has been dumped into the ocean for years and years.

“And the only reason it’s a problem now is because the sewage is being dumped close to shore in shallow waters in a very rich area. And it’s floating back to the top for everyone to get a look at.”

And while marine scientists agree chances of long-term ocean damage are minimal, some say the short-term effects bear serious watching.

Ron McPeak, a marine biologist with Kelco, a company that sells products made from kelp, recently flew over a closed-off area of ocean and some of the three square miles of kelp forests off the San Diego coast.

“There were kelp plants all around where this effluent is boiling to the surface,” he said. “You could see a cloud in the water. It was just kind of scary. I’ve never seen anything like this before, this material in this kind of volume. The question is what it will do.”

From the first days of the spill, there has been some division in the scientific community in characterizations of the severity of the sewage leak.

Last week, an oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography called the spill “an environmental disaster” of “catastrophic” proportions. The oceanographer has since refused to be interviewed.

Mia Tegner, a marine biologist with the oceanographic institution, this week blamed press reports and a loose cannon in the scientific community for misleading the public on the potential effects of the sewage spill.

“Some of these people who have been quoted in the media are not qualified to talk about what they’ve been talking about, they’re people who’s vantage point on ocean pollution is from the tip of their surfboard,” she said, referring to a colleague from her own organization.

“This guy’s on Page One with his off-base predictions while the comments of kelp ecologists who have been studying this issue for their whole careers are buried on the bottom of Page 32.”

And while there are immediate problems in possible effects on the kelp beds from cloudy ocean waters and sewage sediment that might be left on the ocean floor, Tegner said the worst will be over once the leaking pipe is repaired.

“It’ll clear up,” she said of the waters off Point Loma. “Once the leak is stopped, the problem is on the way to being solved. It’s an unusual situation because most sewage spills are of raw effluent while this is a spill of well-treated sewage.

“It’s an unknown, but we’re better off in dealing with a substance that has been partially treated. Eventually, all this fouled water will be moved on with the currents. To that extent, the storms are helping. But it’s a Catch-22. They’ve got to stop long enough so we can begin work on the pipe.”

Despite her positive outlook, Tegner said she might have to rethink her predictions of potential harm to the ocean if the work on the sewage leak drags on longer than expected. “We’ve just got to get that pipe fixed,” she said. “If this thing drags on to the summer, I’ll be very worried.”

A local oceanographer who declined to give his name said, however, that a disaster of sorts has already befallen San Diego and its coastal environment.

“The beach is very much the image of this city,” he said. “And they’re being closed--along with the waters just offshore--for fear of bacteria and harmful viruses.

“It’s a disaster to the surfers and the fishermen who make a living from the water who can’t go out there. It’s a disaster to the America’s Cup boats who have to sail through this stuff.”

He said the local ocean is now being pumped full of metals and other industrial components associated with sewage treatment, as well as materials such as paint thinner and other toxics people flush down their toilets.

“Just like after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the ocean will recover in time,” he said. “But the question begs, ‘How long are we willing to wait?’ The jury is still out. We’re not done polluting.

“At least two months’ time of non-stop sewage dumping in precious near-coastal waters. That’s a disaster in itself, I don’t care what anyone says. We’ve lost control of our sewage and now it’s come back to haunt us.”

Robert Simmons, an attorney for the Sierra Club, agreed, saying that the city’s long history of dumping only partially treated sewage is not only harming the environment, it’s in violation of the Clean Water Act of 1988.

“The city needs to upgrade its sewage treatment as soon as possible,” he said. “And if this sewage pipe rupture was caused by a shift in the seabed, as the city said it was, then officials need to come to terms with the fact that this is an unstable area.

“And before they spend for repairs at a substantial cost to rate-payers, they need to make sure this kind of thing won’t happen again.”

Grant, the state Fish and Game Department marine biologist, echoed the argument that the city of San Diego needs to update the manner in which it dumps its sewage.

“Year in, year out, this kind of sewage dumping has been the way to do business in San Diego--without any opposition or care on anyone’s part,” he said. “What we really need to look at is the public policy that has allowed this to go on for so long without anyone speaking up about it.”

For their part, some state officials have expressed worry that the embarrassing sewage leak, if not repaired within the predicted two to three months, could endanger public health unless still-soiled beaches are kept closed during the spring and summer when tens of millions of tourists visit San Diego.

“I don’t see any long-lasting effects on the ocean itself as long as the outfall is fixed in a timely manner,” said Art Coe, executive officer of the San Diego region of the California Water Quality Control Board.

“But the issue as far as we’re concerned is not aquatic life but the public health. But this spill brings about the prospect of quarantining beaches during spring break and Memorial Day weekend. And that’s a real concern.”

Meanwhile, marine biologists are grappling with some of the possible short-term problems associated with the spill.

Currently, they’re on the watch for increased deoxygenation of ever-cloudy local seas that could inhibit plant growth. Effluent, scientists fear, will rob the water of much-needed oxygen necessary for bacteria to break down sewage--further depriving both plants and animals of one of their building blocks for survival.

They are also worried that a pesky particle of sewage sentiment could settle on the ocean floor, killing off bottom-feeders and an entire generation of kelp plants by covering rocks where young plants would usually branch out.

Called organic loading, this release of particles such as proteins, carbons and carbohydrates could also cloud waters to prevent normal underwater plant growth and prevent photosynthesis. A host of bottom-feeders such as brittle stars, sea urchins, starfish, assorted sea worms, clams and mollusks could be smothered and wiped out by the sentiment, scientists say.

The sewage, marine biologists say, is also carried into the water on an avalanche of fresh water, the effects of which might reduce the salinity of waters near shore, possibly damaging underwater habitats.

Once again, scientists say, Mother Nature will be on hand to help her own cause.

“The sunlight hitting the water will help break this (sewage) substance down,” said Tegner, the Scripps marine biologist. “But it’s not an instantaneous process. And we can’t rely solely on that.”

Ironically, says marine biologist Ron McPeak, organisms known as filter-feeders might actually benefit from the sewage outfall by extracting amino acids from the material.

That’s not enough to keep sea urchin diver John Fletcher around. With a 4-month-old son to worry about, he’s moving on to fresher waters.

“No one in his right mind would dive into that water,” he said. “I’m afraid of causing harm to my family, of getting hepatitis and passing it on to my wife and child.”

A year from now or more, when the leak has been stopped and the sewage has washed away from his favorite fishing haunts, maybe then Fletcher will come home again.

Maybe.

“I don’t know,” he said. “With that much sewage, it’s going to take an awful long time for the local environment to clean out its system. If it ever can.”

* DEADLINE SET: April 4 is the target date for repairs to the pipeline. B4