After the Deluge : Beach Is Going to Waste : A five-mile stretch from Dana Point to San Clemente is off-limits indefinitely with millions of gallons of sewage spewing from a ruptured pipe.

A five-mile stretch of beach from Dana Point to San Clemente will remain closed for at least a week as 2 million gallons of raw sewage a day continued Tuesday to pour into the ocean from a ruptured sewer line along Oso Creek.

Because of poor access to the fractured pipe, Santa Margarita Water District crews probably won’t be able to control the waste spurting from the severed pipe in Mission Viejo until Thursday morning. By then, a total of 6 million to 8 million gallons of untreated sewage will have polluted Oso Creek and then the ocean off Doheny State Beach.

“I guarantee we won’t open the beaches this week,” said Bob Merryman, the county’s environmental health director. “I would say possibly they will stay closed through next Friday (Jan. 29), maybe longer.”

The sewage spill, which began about 3 a.m. Monday, already is Orange County’s largest since 1981, when 6 million gallons of raw sewage fouled Newport Harbor. But the Oso Creek spill will equal or eclipse that one by Thursday.

A 40-foot-long stretch of the pipe, just north of Jeronimo Road, between Marguerite Parkway and Olympiad Road, was damaged in a mudslide early Monday. The break in the line is forcing the sewage into adjacent Oso Creek, which then flows via Trabuco and San Juan creeks into the ocean 12 miles away.

Workers are having trouble reaching the site due to its unstable, rain-soaked soils. Crews Tuesday were rebuilding a service road so repair equipment could be brought in.

“Because of the rain, the rough road that was in there is in pretty bad shape, so we’re putting gravel in to make it accessible to heavy equipment,” said Bob Reagan, operations director of the Santa Margarita Water District.

The crews will then haul in pumps and portable pipe to temporarily divert the sewage around the break and back into the pipeline. Then the waste can be treated as usual at South County’s waste-water plant in Dana Point.

Reagan on Tuesday morning predicted that the sewage will be diverted “within 48 hours, if not sooner.” Then, permanent repairs will begin.

The 18-inch-diameter pipeline handles 3 million gallons of waste every day from about 12,000 homes in Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita and Coto de Caza. About one-third is already being diverted through another pipeline, leaving 2 million gallons a day flowing untreated into Oso Creek and the ocean, Reagan said.

“No Bathing” signs were posted along the bacteria-laden beach every 30 feet or so from Avenida Pico in San Clemente to the point at Dana Point. The area, however, was sparsely populated Tuesday.

Some beach-goers were not surprised by the signs.

“It’s sad to say, but it’s more often than not that I see these contaminated water signs,” said Debbra Miller, a Dana Point resident who usually walks Doheny Beach every day with a friend.

Park Ranger Brad Barker said Doheny State Beach has to be closed several times a year because of spills at the nearby waste-water plant. This spill, however, is unusual because of its size and because it started in Oso Creek, far inland.

Oso, Trabuco and San Juan creeks are rare, unpaved streams that provide freshwater habitat for birds and fish. Since Monday, the normally placid creeks have been filled with brown, turbulent waste.

No dead fish or birds have been reported, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t suffering injuries or illnesses from the waste, said Cheryl Heffly-Burd, the state Department of Fish and Game’s wildlife biologist for Orange County.

“Any time (wildlife) gets exposed to this material, you’d have a high level of infections. And if they eat something contaminated, they could have complications from that,” she said.

Little is known about the impact sewage spills have on birds, animals and fish. Some human diseases found in waste are transmittable to wildlife.

“We haven’t studied it, so all we have is anecdotal information of high incidents of wildlife death in association with sewage spills in Orange and Los Angeles counties,” Heffly-Burd said. “Common sense dictates that animals feeding in the area, or exposed because of open cuts, will have complications to their health.”

Mick Rivera, an environmental contaminant specialist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Carlsbad, said nitrogen could be the most hazardous part of the waste for wildlife, since it causes turbidity and consumes the oxygen in the water.

“You have this huge influx of nitrogen and nutrients and bacteria,” he said. “But I’ve never seen a bird directly killed from a sewage spill. A reason is that most occur in heavy rainfall, so there is some dilution going on.”

Although the creeks contain some fish, the habitat is especially valuable to birds, including black-shouldered kites, a sensitive species that inhabits freshwater streams. This time of year, “you would have heavy bird usage there,” Heffly-Burd said.

The environmental health office of the County Health Care Agency sampled area beaches for bacteria Tuesday morning and will test again Friday. Results were not yet available, but runoff from heavy rains means the bacteria counts are already high, and it will take days, if not weeks, for them to return to normal.

Health officials warn that serious infectious diseases such as hepatitis and salmonella can be transmitted to people who come in contact with raw human sewage.

“You’ve got some 10 million gallons going down there in a three-day period. That’s a lot of raw sewage. It will be diluted, but we feel very committed that the area must remain closed,” Merryman said.

Some surfers ignored or didn’t notice the warning signs and tried to run into the surf anyway Tuesday, but they were told to stay out, Barker said.

“I haven’t had any reports of sewage or fecal matter washing up on shore, but the lifeguards have been asking surfers to stay out of the water,” Barker said.

Environmentalists have often criticized the managers of South County’s waste-water system for frequent spills, saying better protective systems are needed.

Reagan said his crews “winterized” the sewer lines before this month’s storms by laying sandbags and cleaning out storm drains. But he said such maintenance cannot stop a landslide.

The underground sewage line, running along a slope above Oso Creek, ruptured when a landslide caused the creek bank to collapse.

“We’re subject to acts of God like everybody else. We try not to have any man-made problems, but something like this is like people losing their houses with no insurance,” Reagan said.

The county’s all-time largest spill was in January, 1969, when record-breaking storms flooded the area and 10 million gallons of raw sewage from Riverside County surged into the Santa Ana River every day for several weeks. The waste flowed into the ocean off Huntington Beach, closing beaches from Newport Pier to Huntington State Beach for months.

Another huge spill was in 1980, when 9 million gallons a day flowed into the ocean off Doheny beach for several weeks because of major malfunctions at the Dana Point waste-water plant.

Even before the spill, the beach at Dana Point was in rough shape because of storm runoff into San Juan Creek. Dead animals, trees, oily waste and other debris has been carried from inland cities to the ocean by the rain-swollen creek.

Leonard Nash, a member of the Doheny Surf Club who was checking out the waves Monday, said a newly formed sandbar is causing waves to break farther out to sea, giving surfers a longer ride.

“But we are going to have to surf through couches, trees and shopping carts,” he said with a laugh.

Times staff writer Timothy G. Chou contributed to this report.

What Caused Sewage Spill Raw sewage is spilling into Oso Creek at the rate of 2 million gallons a day. A sewage line ruptured Monday when a landslide collapsed the creek bank. 1. Creek rises because of heavy rains. 2. 40 feet of sewage line breaks in landslide. 3. Sewage flows downstream into ocean. Source: Santa Margarita Water District; researched by MARLA CONE and APRIL JACKSON / Los Angeles Times