$1.2 Million Later . . .

With a final $100,000 test Thursday, the Orange County Sanitation District will end its role as lead agency investigating the cause of the high bacteria levels that closed Huntington Beach’s oceanfront for two months this summer.

“We have inspected our lines and treatment plants and have convinced ourselves through our monitoring of the ocean that it’s not our outfall plume that’s been causing the problem,” said Robert P. Ghirelli, the sanitation district’s director of technical services.

The district, which has spent more than $1.2 million, including the expense of Thursday’s dye test, will formally phase out its investigation after it receives the results of the test.

Workers put five barrels of red dye into the district’s outfall pipe, which takes treated sewage 5 miles out to sea, and divers searched along the pipe with meters that measure fluorescent dye. The divers were trying to spot any leaks, and to check the path of the plume from any leaks and from the mouth of the pipe.

Though the test began without a hitch, there was a dramatic false alarm when an airplane spotter saw the reddish color of a red tide on the ocean’s surface and mistakenly reported it as red dye, indicating a leak in the outfall pipe.

At the time, the district’s general manager, Don McIntyre, announced in a meeting: “The news is, we have a leak in the pipe.”

The announcement sent district officials scrambling to confirm with divers what the spotter had seen. Meanwhile, other officials began discussing the monumental task of repairing such a leak in a 10-foot-wide pipe carrying 260 million gallons of treated waste a day.

The observations of the spotter, who was not part of the test team, were later discounted.

“We just got off the phone with the divers and people on the boat,” Ghirelli said, “and they have not visually observed anything like the dye. The people on the boat did say there is a strong red tide, and they are 99.9% sure that what the pilot saw from the airplane is red tide.”

Red tide occurs naturally when higher-than-normal concentrations of microscopic algae are present. For the dye test, results of readings taken from instruments carried by divers will not be known until later today.

*

During the investigation, the sanitation district had hundreds of ground-water samples collected from drilling through sand and pavement. Pump stations were tested, drained and then retested. High-tech equipment, like ground-penetrating radar, was brought in, and workers inspected miles of underground pipe with mini-video cameras and closed-circuit television.

In addition to the sanitation district’s costs, Huntington Beach spent $335,000, mostly for its public works department to rigorously examine city-owned storm drains, pipelines and pump stations. Included in the city’s amount are expenses for lifeguards and police.

In their previous diagnostic tests, county sanitation technicians have ruled out the outfall pipe as a source of the bacteria. But the dye test is expected to exclude the pipe unequivocally and allow the district to phase out its investigation.

“It’s the final test,” Ghirelli said. “And it’s to cross the t’s and dot the i’s.” But the district, with its laboratory and army of lab technicians, will remain a part of the existing task force that now will tackle the bigger problem of dealing with urban runoff.

“We don’t have a smoking gun yet,” Ghirelli said. “But most of the agencies that are part of the task force realize we’re going to have to do more work on urban runoff and the contribution that the runoff is doing to this problem.”

During the three months of the investigation, a task force of local, state and federal agencies operated on the premise that the mysterious bacteria was tied to sewage, not runoff.

The agencies looking into the problem now will have to determine whether the county, state or federal government will take over the next phase.

Ghirelli said sanitation officials have had some talks with county supervisors and Huntington Beach officials--”but no discussion on who will take the lead and who pays for the next phase.”

The likely choice would be a federal agency like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which monitors such large waterways as the Santa Ana River. Army Corps officials could not be reached for comment late Thursday.

Huntington Beach cannot afford to be the lead agency, city leaders there said, although the city and its residents have been negatively affected by the beach closures.

“I don’t think anyone can afford it. I know we don’t have any money and the county doesn’t have any extra money either,” said Richard Barnard, Huntington Beach assistant city administrator.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Picking Up The Tab

The Orange County Sanitation District has spent $1.2 million trying to find the source of the summer’s unusually high bacteria levels in the waters off Huntington Beach. Estimated and actual expenditures include the following:

Coast Trunk Siphon Inspection:

Checking siphon drain located 40 feet under Huntington State Beach parking lot.

* $736,931

Vicinity Characteristics Research:

Includes ground penetrating radar, $70 worth of oranges and lemons used to track the flow of water through Talbert Marsh and Thursday’s outfall dye test.

* $212,222

Sewer Inspection / Rehabilitation:

Line cleaning, closed-circuit television inspection of sewer lines beneath Huntington State Beach restrooms, and other services.

* $90,281

In-house Laboratory Analysis:

Sampling, boat operation costs

* $86,607

Other Administrative Services:

Documents, mapping, staff time

* $107,262

Total: $1,233,303

Source: Orange County Sanitation District

Searching for an Elusive Leak

The Orange County Sanitation District put fluorescent dye into a sewage treatment discharge pipe Thursday in the latest attempt to find the source of high bacteria levels that closed much of Huntington Beach’s oceanfront this summer.

1. Dye injected into discharge pipe

2. Divers take measurements, water samples

3. Boat searches for leaks, takes readings along sea floor

4. Another boat tracks treated sewage flow at discharge point

Source: Orange County Sanitation District

Graphics reporting by BRADY MacDONALD / Los Angeles Times