Leaky Sewage Pipes a Major Factor in O.C Coastal Woes

Poorly maintained and aging sewer systems in Orange County have clogged, crumbled or broken down at least 198 times so far this year, spilling more than 300,000 gallons of raw sewage.

Much of this bacteria-laden waste eventually finds its way to the Pacific Ocean, adding to the county’s miserable year of coastal pollution.

The data on sewage spills were compiled by The Times based on hundreds of pages of documents, including surveys sent to 34 agencies and cities about maintenance, funding and future needs. The Times also collected sewage spill information from the county and state.

While some of the spillage was caused by an aging sewer system that would be expensive to replace, most of it stems from easily preventable problems: pipes choked by grease or tree roots, or sewer lines that simply go unmaintained.

“Everybody is in deep trouble--they just haven’t faced it yet,” said Chuck Scheid, a member of a committee that spent two years studying the aging and decaying streets, sewers and storm drains of Huntington Beach.

After much of Huntington’s coastline was closed last summer because of high ocean bacteria counts, regulators zeroed in on urban runoff, the toxic brew of animal waste, pesticides and other pollutants that drain from streets, lawns and parking lots. The pollutants stream into storm drains and waterways, eventually tainting the ocean.

Largely overlooked in this equation has been the raw human waste slipping into the waters from broken, seeping or stopped-up pipes via storm drains or creeks that empty into the ocean.

But data compiled by The Times show that problem pipes, even those 20 miles or more from the ocean, caused all of the 30 beach closures this year in Orange County--eight more than in all of 1999.

The number of sewer-pipe spills is on a pace to exceed last year’s numbers, with five months left to go. In 1999, 264 spills in Orange County released 318,303 gallons of raw waste. Those numbers were up slightly from the year before.

It’s impossible to know exactly how much of the spilled sewage hits Orange County’s beaches from pipeline breakdowns each year. Nor is it clear whether the county’s problems are worse than elsewhere in Southern California. San Diego County’s ocean pollution problems frequently originate in the more polluted Mexican waters adjacent to it. Los Angeles County reports a minuscule number of sewage spills that reach the coastline, but some experts doubt whether those numbers reflect reality.

Efforts to apply a regional cure for neglected and aging sewers are hampered by a fragmented system. Two regional boards and 34 local agencies--all with different maintenance policies and capital improvement budgets--oversee sewage collection in Orange County, a patchwork of clay, concrete and plastic pipes so extensive that, if laid out in a straight line, would stretch from Seal Beach to Greenland and back again.

“Sewers for years have been out-of-sight, out-of-mind,” said Nick Arhontes, manager of facilities maintenance for the Orange County Sanitation District. “People drive down the street and see a pothole, they get angry and call City Hall to see something done about it. But they may not know that their sewer system is more distressed than their streets.”

Records show a clear link between spills and neglect.

Most Spills Were Avoidable

The waters off Laguna Beach have been sullied by 21,400 gallons of human waste during the last 18 months. In a sewer-line spill last month, barefoot beachgoers unwittingly sloshed through puddles of sewage, which city workers had failed to cordon off, on a street near the beach.

In Seal Beach, three of the four beach closures this year have been caused by inland sewer pipe blockages and breaks. In June, a blocked pipe overflowed 15 miles away in La Habra, sending 50,000 gallons of sewage into the San Gabriel River, which empties into the ocean just north of Seal Beach.

And in Dana Point, a 1933 pipe with hairline cracks ruptured in May, creating a hole the size of four cars. The force of the break shot 8,000 gallons of raw sewage into the street, closing half a mile of beach. The city says the cracks contributed to the rupture.

Most of these spills could have--and should have--been avoided by routine inspections and proper maintenance, experts say. The Laguna Beach spill in July occurred days after city workers ignored a resident’s complaint about a backed-up sewer, which might have been leaking undetected for five months.

Laguna Beach approved a sewer-rate hike in July to pay for inspecting all of its lines with a video camera. The remote-controlled cameras creep through pipes, broadcasting pictures of the interior, and are considered the best way to find tiny cracks and buildup of clogs. When Huntington Beach used cameras to inspect its aging lines, workers discovered patches of sewer pipe that had been eaten away.

But in most cities, sewers take low priority.

“I don’t think anyone has conducted those inspections as frequently as they should have in the past,” said Wayne Baglin, chairman of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Board, which enforces the Clean Water Act in southern Orange and San Diego counties. “If they videotaped the lines, they’d probably see things so urgent they wouldn’t understand how it’s holding together, even today.”

Hidden, Chronic Leaks Suspected

On top of the known sewer spills, Baglin and other experts suspect that some of the chronic contamination at spots along Orange County’s shoreline may be exacerbated by sewage dripping undetected from cracked and compromised lines. Because of a lack of inspections, no one really knows how many lines are damaged--and how long some have been leaking.

“There’s a strong suspicion that some of the high counts of bacteria in storm water are the result of sewage breaks, undetected corrosion,” said David Beckman, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles.

Garden Grove Sanitation District had the most spills of any agency in 1999--nearly one out of every five reported in Orange County, accounting for more than one-third of the raw sewage released. Most of the city’s 45 spills were caused by a buildup of grease from restaurants and homes.

The city government inherited its sewers three years ago from an independent district. Garden Grove has no maps showing where its 425 miles of lines are buried. Its schedule calls for cleaning medium-sized pipes only once every seven years; recommendations call for annual clean-outs. Large pipes have never been cleaned. And 5,000 feet of plastic sewer main from the 1960s are now falling apart.

“When we took over the sanitation district, it was a disaster,” Garden Grove Mayor Bruce Broadwater said. “We had pipes that literally disintegrated on us.

“We have an older system that hasn’t really been maintained. It will be maintained, but it’s a long-term program,” Broadwater said.

The City Council plans to spend $1.4 million this year on its sewers, including cleaning its entire system once every two years.

Yet in the end, experts say, it probably costs less to do proper maintenance and repair than to wait until human waste spills out or backs up from pipes.

“It costs a lot to be in the reactive mode,” said Johnny Gonzales, a water quality engineer working on the state’s sewer spill database. “You have to pull the tractors out in the middle of the night and pay workers overtime. If you put maintenance on a five-year schedule, by planning things out, there is probable savings.”

To be sure, some cities invest in their sewers. Newport Beach has spent more than $6.5 million on sewer projects during the last five years. The city has built a new pump station and replaced deteriorated sewer mains. The city cleans its sewer mains every 18 months, and trouble spots are scoured monthly. In 1999, the city reported two raw sewage spills that released a total of 825 gallons.

Newport Beach adopted its long-range plan four years ago. Four other Orange County cities are scrambling to draft a plan ahead of more stringent federal requirements proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Those requirements are part of a new scrutiny of ailing sewer systems. State water quality engineers have spent the last year building a database to track all sewage spills in California to get a handle on the problem. Congress also is considering several pieces of water quality legislation. And the EPA is now focusing on sewage spills as one of three high-priority issues.

President Clinton on Monday signed the Oceans Act 2000, which establishes a 16-member Commission on Ocean Policy to coordinate strategies to better protect coastal environments. Clinton also called on Congress to fund his Lands Legacy initiative, which includes a proposed $429 million in fiscal year 2001 for ocean and coastal protection.

Certainly, it’s a nationwide problem. The country’s 16,000 waste water systems, which treat some 17 billion gallons of waste water a day, face a staggering price tag to update dilapidated systems--about $23 billion annually, according to the Assn. of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies. But in Orange County, concern over beach pollution makes its failing sewer system an acute, if not emergency, issue.

County agencies have identified nearly $2 billion in needed sewer upgrades in coming years. That does not include the needs of 12 agencies that did not provide estimates to The Times.

“We’ve been woefully negligent,” said Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), chairwoman of the Assembly Select Committee on Coastal Protection. “We are just disrespecting our natural resources, and it’s coming home to roost. . . . Everything runs downhill. It all runs into the ocean.”

Lax, Uneven Reporting of Spills

Regional water officials fined Laguna Beach $60,000 last month for its eight spills in the last 18 months, which closed beaches for 29 days. Moulton-Niguel Water District is expected to be fined today for a string of spills earlier this year. A fine against the Orange County Sanitation District is expected next month.

“You would expect to see the cities or county begin to deal with the issue,” Beckman said.

For the most part, they haven’t.

Reporting requirements had been lax, and record-keeping spotty, until the last couple of years, making any comparison of spills before 1998 meaningless.

In the late 1970s, health officials kept some reports on pastel rabbit-shaped paper, jokingly referred to as “bunny notes.”

Cities that reported all of their spills felt they were unfairly branded because other agencies reported few, if any, of their spills.

For example, San Clemente has documented all its spills since 1978. Others, such as Huntington Beach, La Habra and Orange, still report few spills, if any.

“Anybody who says they have a perfect maintenance system with virtually zero releases or blockages--I would be very suspect,” said Jon Schladweiler, a Tucson sewage expert.

But the cities defend their reporting.

“The ones that I can recall--I know we’ve responded and we’ve reported those,” said Rich Barnard, a Huntington Beach spokesman. He added that city officials have not hidden from the facts about their sewer system--they brought attention to the aging, deteriorated lines in downtown Huntington Beach before spending more than $2 million to reinforce them over the last year and a half.

Still, this summer, the Huntington Beach City Council refused a recommendation to ask voters in November for money to improve the city’s aging sewer system. Council members said the public didn’t understand sewer problems well enough to pass such a measure, although they have agreed to put an advisory measure on the November ballot.

A committee evaluating Huntington Beach’s streets and sewers identified more than $88 million worth of needed sewer repairs and replacements. City workers report odors emanating from pump stations in need of repairs. One pumping station in particular is on life support.

“It’s old and tired,” said Scheid, the committee member. “Sometime during semi-flood conditions, it might break, and if it does, within 15 minutes, we will be flooding the local neighborhood.”

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THE NUMBERS

A detailed breakdown of spills, maintenance costs and other sewage system data. A12

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Orange County’s Sewer System WASTING AWAY

Hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage flow under Orange COunty every day through an aging and often neglected network of pipes. Last year in Orange County, clogged and crumbling sewer pipes spilled more than 300,000 gallons of raw sewage.