Clean Sea: More Than Technology

The Orange County Sanitation District has thrown up its hands and said it can’t do anything more. The city of Huntington Beach has spent vast sums trying to locate the source of a devastating pollution problem that closed beaches and cut into the heart of summer in Surf City.

In the process, we have been learning a lot about the advanced state of technology for locating pollution problems but are left in the end with a more troubling conclusion. The things being done carelessly upstream and inland are having a devastating effect on the life of the sea, which in a place like Huntington Beach is the center of recreation and commerce.

We don’t have a single originating source of the pollution, but the verdict is more devastating; slowly we are poisoning the ocean.

The lengths to which the district went to identify the problem were impressive. This included putting fluorescent dye into a discharge pipe and dispatching divers to follow it. The district inspected sewer lines. The city of Huntington Beach spent $335,000 to examine city-owned storm drains, pipelines and pump stations.

When it was all done, Robert P. Ghirelli, the sanitation district’s director of technical services, concluded what had become apparent even to the lay observer: “We’re going to have to do more work on urban runoff.”

That’s a far more daunting task than finding one culprit through the costly investigations. And cost now becomes more of an issue. Since this is a regional problem, it makes sense for an agency with broad jurisdiction, like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which monitors large waterways, to take up the challenge.

But as volunteers found last month when they turned out for the annual trash cleanup, the solution lies with all of us. More than 65,000 pounds of trash were picked up from San Clemente to Seal Beach on one weekend day. Then there were the more than 1,000 hypodermic needles that washed ashore off Huntington Beach a few days earlier.

The costly cleanup at Huntington Beach is a signal that the problem is much bigger than the money available to track it, let alone undertake the expensive task of refitting sewage treatment plants.

Money will help, but the solution lies in the hands of every homeowner, businessperson and individual making a choice about what to do with waste in the yard or deposited along the sidewalk.