South Laguna : Beach Gets Health Clearance After Spill

Aliso Beach, closed for two days by an 80,000-gallon sewage spill, was reopened Friday in time for the long Labor Day weekend after ocean water came up clean in tests, county health officials said.

But county Environmental Health Director Robert Merryman said he is concerned that the South County Water District delayed one day in notifying his department of the spill.

Health officials closed 500 feet on each side of Aliso Creek to swimmers on Thursday. Exposure to coliform bacteria present in even fully treated waste can lead to hepatitis and salmonellosis, a flu-like disease of the intestinal tract.

It was “a stroke of luck” that the beach was reopened before Labor Day, Merryman said. Coincidentally, county health officials were doing routine testing in the ocean near Aliso Creek on the day of the spill. If the tests had not been conducted Thursday, when the county agency was notified of the spill, the required 48-hour test period wouldn’t have ended until the weekend, when the health department is closed.

The waste overflow occurred Wednesday morning after the sewage flow had been shut down to inspect a pipe. Before divers could reopen the pipe, sewage had backed up going into the plant and was siphoned into Aliso Creek, a tributary that flows into the ocean.

Plant supervisors left a memo describing the accident on the desk of South County Water District General Manager Mike Dunbar. But Dunbar said he was away from his office in meetings all day, and didn’t learn about the spill until that evening.

“We can’t just let those kind of things sit there,” Dunbar said. “I let the people involved know that I need to be tracked down. It was a mistake, and hopefully it won’t happen again.”

Merryman said it was unlikely that anyone became sick from the spill on Aliso Beach before the swimming ban was imposed.