It’s No Day at the Beach as Bacteria, Closures Persist : Environment: As search for contamination source drags on, Huntington Beach fears for its economy and image.

There’s an unwelcome summer guest lurking along the Huntington Beach coast--one that everyone is pursuing but nobody can find. It’s fouling Surf City’s coveted beaches, which play host to 11 million visitors a year, and is bumming out a community synonymous with summer fun.

For the last two months, bacteria have been sweeping into the ocean from somewhere along the beach, threatening the health of swimmers as well as Huntington Beach’s hard-earned vacationland image and its tourism industry.

The investigation into the source of the bacteria focused Saturday on rusty, 60-year-old sewer pipes that run under the beach bike path. Workers were digging up the pipes to find out whether the pollution could be coming from a long-ago-demolished sewage plant that operated near the beach in the 1930s.

About four miles of prime beach on both sides of the city’s landmark pier is closed off and no one knows when it will be reopened. The city’s foul mood is spreading along with the pollution.

Merchants complain about bicycles, surfboards and roller-skates going unrented, and fear that the situation will grow far worse if the beaches remain closed through the Labor Day weekend. City leaders worry that a prolonged closure will have long-lasting effects on the image of a community known around the world for its surf-friendly beaches.

“What’s Surf City if you can’t swim?” asked Rick Fignetti, owner of Rockin’ Fig’s Surf Shop on Main Street. “Summer’s nearly over.”

Desperate to keep tourists coming, the city has slashed its beach parking rates from $7 a day to $1 and is considering holding a special festival within the next few weeks.

“We have a reputation as one of the cleanest, safest beaches in the state . . . and now there’s this,” said Mayor Peter M. Green, who can no longer contain his frustration.

Teams of engineers can’t find the source of what has now become the worst sewage leak in Orange County’s history, despite a $400,000 search using drills, offshore sonar and ground-penetrating radar.

“It’s quite puzzling,” Green said. “It comes, it goes. It smells, it doesn’t smell. It’s invisible and dangerous and not at all interested in being found out.”

And so the infected waters keep stretching farther north--pushed by the same southerly swells that surfers can only gaze at. More than half of Surf City’s total oceanfront is now closed off.

“It’s so depressing,” said Jim Houston, who strolled downtown last week with a group of visiting relatives. “I’m like, ‘Mom, Dad, welcome to beautiful Huntington Beach. We can’t go to the beach. And we absolutely cannot go in the water.’ How sad is that?”

Even more annoying, other residents point out, is that Huntington State Beach has never looked better, thanks to last year’s cleanup and crackdowns on littering.

“The beach is really looking nice, like the best it’s been in a couple of years,” said Bill Riley, 38, who pedaled down the bike trail with his 5-year-old son to watch the work being done by contractors investigating the leak. “They’ve been cleaning up the trash and doing a good job, and then this happens.”

Few were alarmed at first, when engineers found unhealthy levels of bacteria along a 5,000-foot section south of the pier and shut it down July 1. Visitors bureau officials downplayed the move, reminding residents that seven miles of unaffected beaches were still available.

But soon that dwindled to six safe miles, then five. Business dropped as visitors began driving past the yellow police tape strung around Huntington’s deserted beaches. Merchants called City Hall to complain, frantic that the leak wouldn’t be found by Labor Day, when the typical crowd of more than 250,000 people doubles sales along Main Street and the pier.

Michael Cask, who owns a downtown gift and beach rental shop, said many businesses have already suffered losses this year because of poor weather. He hoped to make up for some of it over the holiday.

“I don’t even have 10% of the business I usually have,” he said, “. . . and finally the weather is in favor, but the water isn’t. It’s Murphy’s Law.”

The county Health Care Agency has not reported any illnesses related to the pollution--in part because the beaches were closed so quickly after the sewage was detected, officials said.

Still, many beachgoers--who have called the health agency as the closures lengthened--wonder whether they were exposed to the pollution, said Larry Honeybourne, an agency spokesman.

The bacteria can cause eye, ear and nose infections, breathing troubles and headaches. The contaminated water can carry pathogens that cause diarrhea, respiratory infections and other health problems.

And now, with less than four miles of unaffected beach left and the once-buzzing Municipal Pier flanked by polluted water, a mixture of emotions has taken hold of the city. Gloom. Anger. Defeat.

“There’s a lot we don’t even understand. But we will figure it out. We have to,” said Honeybourne, who has the final say on which beaches will be closed.

Some compare the sewage leak to the American Trader spill in 1990, when more than 400,000 gallons of oil seeped into Huntington Beach waters and easily became the county’s worst environmental disaster. But everyone knew where that stuff was coming from. . . . There was an end in sight.

“At least the oil spill, as bad as it was, was in February,” said concession stand owner Monte Nitzkowski, who canceled delivery orders and reduced his staff when the beach closures reached the pier and he tallied a 25% drop in business. He pointed to sea gulls languishing on the sand. “The only crowds I see are those birds over there.”

Nitzkowski and others, including city and county officials, say the bacterial pollution could be far more devastating than the oil spill.

For starters, there isn’t a target spot to focus on yet, other than the parking lot at Huntington State Beach, where crews are punching holes in a two-mile stretch of asphalt and bike trails. They are searching there not because evidence suggests they should, but because logic tells them to, because it’s where the Orange County Sanitation District’s main sewer line runs and where radar picked up images that might suggest a leak.

So far, they have found nothing.

A break in the line could be the size of a golf ball, a fist or a cantaloupe. Or it could be no bigger than a crack in a crusty old concrete pipe.

“We have no idea why this is happening,” said Monica Mazur, a county health officer. “It’s bizarre. It’s frustrating.”

Shelly Bennett and her 13-year-old son, Alex, were among the many visitors planning an early checkout from their motel last week. The Duarte residents lounged by the pool at the Huntington Shores Motel, directly across the street from the latest beach closure, and decided against taking a walk on the sand.

“You can’t even build a sand castle because you need water for that,” Bennett said. “So why go down there? We could have done this at home.”

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August Beach Attendance

Visitors to Huntington State Beach this August and last. This year, the month began with about half of the beach cordoned off, and the closure was expanded incrementally. By the end of the day on Aug. 18, the whole beach was off limits to water recreation.

Sources: Huntington State Beach. Times replorts