When Beach Is Polluted: Tell or Don’t Tell? : Sewage: State officials say Ventura County should be testing and notifying public about unsafe conditions. County says it does not have the resources and questions whether law applies to it.

VENTURA — It starts with the heavy storms that come each year, washing fertilizer and pesticides from farmland, smashing sewer lines and unleashing rivers of raw sewage that roar down the creeks and into the ocean.

Month after month, the pollution builds--compounded by oil spills and even the occasional summer cloudburst--into a toxic stew of grease and oil, animal droppings and household trash flushed down city storm drains.

Sooner or later, it all ends up in the Pacific Ocean. And as the poison hits the beaches, the usual scenario involves local health authorities rushing into action--testing the seawater for pollution and posting the beaches with warning signs.

With one major exception--Ventura County.

The county’s environmental health division has ignored state health laws for years by failing to post warning signs on beaches during major sewage spills or other episodes of unsafe bacterial contamination, according to state officials.

“The public needs to be notified when there are problems,” said Jack McGurk, environmental manager of the California Health Services Department. “That’s the law.”

Defending their practices, Ventura County officials question whether the law really applies to them. They say they have no legal obligation to post warning signs on beaches because they do not test the waters for bacteria and thus have no way to determine if the ocean is unfit for swimming.

“If we are going to warn the public, then we have to have some data,” said Donald Koepp, the county’s environmental health director. “We have to have a rationale. We cannot do that as an indiscriminate act.” As for collecting bacteria test data, he said, “we don’t have the resources.”

Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties all follow similar protocol in safeguarding the public against potential health hazards on the beach.

The three counties post warning signs on beaches if sewage spills as small as a few hundred gallons reach the ocean. They routinely install warnings at the mouths of storm drains, creeks and other outlets after major rainstorms.

“We know from experience that every flowing storm drain can be a problem,” said Jack Petralia, Los Angeles County’s director of environmental protection.

Gary Stephany, environmental health director for San Diego County, said his office takes sewage spills very seriously. “We are required by law to protect the public health,” he said. “We close beaches and don’t open them back up until we get three days of clean samples.”

Even bankrupt Orange County has managed to piece together money to continue testing for bacteria, posting warning signs and operating its beach closure hot line for ocean swimmers and surfers and concerned parents.

“We have to close beaches where there are sewage spills,” said Larry Honeybourne, an Orange County environmental health official. “That’s clearly what the statutes say.”

Some say they are startled by Ventura’s approach in a county that takes such pride in its environmental purity.

“At a minimum, it is an ostrich-head-in-the-sand attitude,” said Neil Moyer, president of the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County. “It’s beyond shameful, it is irresponsible because it is a public health issue.”

The situation also frustrates divers, swimmers and surfers who blame polluted waters for outbreaks of ear and sinus infections, skin rashes and flu-like ailments.

“Obviously, people want to stay out of the water when it’s not safe,” said Lawrence Manson of the Surfrider Foundation, a coastal protection group. “It sure would be useful if the county would post the beaches.”

Dozens of reports of sewage spills caused by pipeline blockages, washouts and other mishaps are kept in three-ring binders at Ventura County’s environmental health division. Each one is dutifully reported to county health officials, as required by state law.

But Ventura County officials rarely pass on this information to the public.

Only twice this year have they issued public advisories warning of the health risks: once in January, when a swamped Thousand Oaks plant released 425,000 gallons of partially treated sewage, and once in March after a 21-inch-wide pipe in central Thousand Oaks unleased a 10 million gallon spill.

The March 10 spill into the Arroyo Conejo, a tributary of Calleguas Creek, which flows into Mugu Lagoon and then out to sea, was the largest this year in Ventura County.

The second largest was Jan. 10, when a 15-inch-wide line ruptured along San Antonio Creek, releasing an estimated 2 million gallons of raw sewage from Ojai. The creek feeds into the Ventura River and then dumps into the ocean.

Both spills involved aging sewage lines that were placed along creek beds to take advantage of the natural downward slope of land and thus avoid the need for pumps.

This year there have been at least a dozen major sewage spills, ranging from 2,500 to 2 million gallons, that never registered a response from health officials--even though officials elsewhere say they would have routinely triggered beach closures in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.

The 2-million-gallon spill from the Ojai sewer main washout caused widespread concern when it was reported by The Times 10 days after the incident. The Times had received a tip from a resident who had seen the gushing spill. The sewage had traveled down the Ventura River to the ocean.

“When we notified the county, we believed our responsibility to notify the public was satisfied,” said Eric J. Oltmann, Ojai Sanitation’s general manager. “When that didn’t happen, we were astonished and then a bit embarrassed.”

Koepp said his office received the notification two days late and thus did not advise the public. “Several days had gone by so we felt there probably wasn’t a hazard. We made a judgment call.”

But, again without testing, Koepp did issue a public warning about ocean waters five days after the Thousand Oaks sewer main rupture.

“If someone tells me they’ve dumped 10 million gallons of sewage,” he said, “I don’t need a certified lab and a biologist telling me there’s a problem.”

Koepp stopped short of actually posting warning signs, however. In addition to issuing few health advisories, records show that Koepp’s office has not actually posted any warning signs on beaches since February, 1992.

And critics say the failure to do so is particularly questionable in instances where health advisories have been issued.

“If he makes the judgment that there is a health hazard, the law expects him to post the beach as closed,” said Michael Kiado, a senior sanitation engineer with the state Health Services department.

Koepp, who sometimes calls lifeguards and local cities to advise them of sewage spills, said his division does not have to post warning signs on beaches because it has no money for testing and thus has no way to determine when ocean pollution exceeds state bathing standards.

Under California law, according to state officials, the county public health officers are responsible for local ocean water testing and posting at the beaches. Yet the law gives them the discretion of where and how often they must take ocean samples.

Last year, the environmental health division asked the county Board of Supervisors for $126,000 so it could resume a seawater testing program that was dropped in late 1978 after the passage of Proposition 13.

The board rejected the idea, and Koepp said he has no plans to renew the request this year.

But Supervisor John K. Flynn last week instructed the county’s chief administrative officer to re-evaluate the county’s policies and determine who is responsible for posting warnings on beaches during sewage spills.

State law gives local health officers leeway in determining when coastal waters are unsafe. But that discretion, state officials said, was not intended as a loophole to be used as a reason to not post beaches when there are health risks.

“If Ventura County is not doing any posting at all, it flies in the face of the legislative intent,” said former state Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), the author of the 1992 law.

McGurk believes the oversight of environmental health officers should now shift to county administrators and boards of supervisors. Failure to accept such responsibility could eventually expose Ventura County to costly lawsuits, he said.