Another Sewage Spill for Seal Beach

A raw-sewage spill upstream from Seal Beach has forced closure of more than a quarter-mile of the shoreline, the largest discharge of untreated waste in Orange County this year, officials said Tuesday.

A blocked line caused 84,000 gallons of sewage to leak Sunday near Melrose Street and West Crowther Avenue in Placentia, said Larry Honeybourne, program chief of the county Health Care Agency’s water quality section.

Though much of the waste was recovered, at least 21,000 gallons entered a flood control channel that flows first into Coyote Creek, then into the San Gabriel River and finally into the Pacific Ocean at Seal Beach, Honeybourne said.

The spill was reported Monday to the health agency, which closed the beach. The ocean is off-limits to swimmers and surfers from the San Gabriel River breakwater south to 5th Street until at least Thursday, Honeybourne said.

“Swimming in raw sewage, you can contract a variety of symptoms--nausea, vomiting, diarrhea,” Honeybourne said. “Eye, ear, nose and throat infections are also possible.”

Children and the elderly are especially susceptible, he said.

The beach closure is the third this year in Seal Beach. A stretch from the city pier to Anderson Street was closed March 19-23 because of a 1,500-gallon spill caused by a rupture in a line at the city’s sewage treatment facility.

A half-mile of the beach down the coast from the San Gabriel River was closed Feb. 22-28 after rainwater caused the Orange County Sanitation District storm drainage system to overflow in the La Mirada-Buena Park area. Between 1,000 and 10,000 gallons of raw sewage flowed to the ocean via Coyote Creek and the San Gabriel River.

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No Swimming, Again

A sewage spill has forced the closure of a stretch of Seal Beach at least through Thursday, the third closure along the city’s coastline this year.

Source: Orange County Health Care Agency