LONG BEACH : Mystery of Blue Plastic Debris on Beach Solved

U.S. Coast Guard officials have determined that hundreds of small, sky-blue plastic spirals and sponges that washed ashore in Seal Beach this summer were inadvertently released into the San Gabriel River by two Long Beach electric generating stations.

The inch-long spirals and sponges, considered nontoxic by county health officials, are flushed through power plant pipes to scrub away algae.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power admitted responsibility for all of the sponges and a small quantity of the spirals, which were released from the Haynes Generating Station in Long Beach. But a Southern California Edison Co. spokesman said that after a thorough investigation, company officials determined that none of the blue spirals came from Edison’s Alamitos Generating Station, located directly across the San Gabriel River from the Haynes power plant.

Kenneth Bosworth, superintendent of the Haynes station, said the DWP power plant typically uses the sponges instead of the blue spirals. “We try not to point fingers at each other,” Bosworth said. “We could have lost a small number of those blue rubber spirals.”

The Coast Guard inspected operations at both electric generating stations. Neither plant will be fined.

“We’re going to require both facilities to change how they retrieve these things after use,” said Lt. Mark Cunningham, chief of the Coast Guard marine environmental response division.

Gordon Labedz, an environmental activist with the Surfrider Foundation and a Seal Beach resident, said hundreds of the blue spirals have littered beaches during the summer but only a few have washed up in recent days.