Sewage Spill Closes Venice Beach

Glum faces dotted Venice Beach on Monday as beach-goers, many of them on spring break, strolled along the wind-swept sand and gazed at the choppy water.

They could look, but they could not touch: Los Angeles County health officials the day before had prohibited swimming along a four-mile stretch of coastline because of the largest dry-weather sewage spill in several years.

The beaches were closed to swimmers from Dockweiler Beach at Imperial Highway to Venice Beach at Brooks Avenue because a sewer line on Sunday belched several hundred thousand gallons of waste water out of manholes and into the intersection of West Adams Boulevard and South Orange Drive.

The sewage ran into storm drains that empty into Ballona Creek, which carried the polluted water to the ocean.

The beach closure came as a surprise and a major disappointment to Jenna Robles, 15, of Ventura who was clad in a swimsuit and shorts. Her mother had driven Robles and her three sisters to Venice so the family could enjoy spring vacation from school.

“It’s a bummer,” Robles said, clutching her beach towel. “I’m not going to leave or anything, but I definitely wanted to go swimming.”

Most people heeded the bright yellow warning signs that dotted the beach and stayed clear of the water’s edge, but a brave few clambered onto the sea-splashed rocks.

News of the contaminated water seemed to disgust several first-time visitors to Venice Beach, who said they were disappointed that the famous shoreline did not live up to a pristine image portrayed in movies and on television.

“I knew L.A. wasn’t going to be perfect, but this beach is so trashy,” said Olivia Warren, 15, wrinkling her nose and gesturing toward the contaminated water and to the litter on the beach. She was on vacation from Atlanta with her parents.

Swimming will be allowed again on the stretch of beach when bacteria counts in the water are back to safe levels--which could take several days--said Richard Kebabjian, chief of recreational health programs for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

With a sewage spill this large, the protocol is for health officials to prohibit swimming because of presumed high bacteria counts. Results of water samples drawn from Venice and Dockweiler beaches and Ballona Creek should be available today, Kebabjian said. High levels of bacteria can cause diarrhea and other illnesses, Kebabjian said.

Officials of the city’s Bureau of Sanitation said Sunday’s sewage overflow was caused by repair work on a pipe. A plastic liner in the pipe became dislodged and blocked the flow of waste water, said Harry Sizemore, the bureau’s assistant director.

The overflow was the city’s first dry-weather sewage spill in about three years, Sizemore said. The city has upgraded its sewer system over the past 10 years to prevent such backups and overflows, he said.

“We were disappointed to hear about this spill because it really broke the city’s streak,” said Mark Gold, executive director of the environmental group Heal the Bay.

Paul Ouelette, a school counselor in Nevada, was one of the unlucky vacationers who visited Venice Beach on Monday. Although he had planned to take a swim in Venice, Ouelette decided to go to San Diego in search of cleaner water.

“This is real disappointing,” he said. “You get one opportunity to come out here and enjoy yourself.”