Beach Pollution Source Baffles Investigators

In vintage whodunit fashion, myriad suspects have been examined and accusations leveled to find a cause for mysteriously high bacteria levels that contaminated Huntington Beach shores, heralding a summer of gloom for the tourist mecca a year ago today.

Possible culprits: Leaking human waste from a nearby treatment plant; sewage lines disturbed by the razing of an old trailer park; droppings from flocks of birds that inhabit a nearby wetland; ground water being disturbed by construction of a new hotel.

Costly and time-consuming studies in the intervening months have ruled many of them out. Experts now are zeroing in on the most likely, yet most difficult source to pin down: urban runoff, probably from the Talbert Marsh and the Santa Ana River. But even now, water quality experts don’t know for certain what caused the repeated episodes of bacterial pollution that tainted several miles of prime beachfront.

Officials Prepare for Beachgoers

The stakes are high. Huntington Beach’s 8.5-mile shoreline attracts 10 million visitors annually. Already, warning signs are posted along stretches of Huntington Harbor and Huntington State Beach, warning of water unsafe for human contact.

And as the city prepared for an onslaught of tens of thousands of beachgoers this Fourth of July weekend, environmentalists, city officials and water testers alike were anxiously eyeing tidal conditions, which are the same as last July 1--extremely high and low tides, thought to draw more than the usual amount of pollutants from the marsh and riverbed and mix it farther out at sea and spread it up and down Orange County’s coastline.

“It’s disheartening, but I’m not surprised,” said Christopher J. Evans, executive director of the San Clemente-based Surfrider Foundation. “We’re going to see it for some time to come. These problems took a long period of time . . . to create and they’re not going to be fixed overnight.”

The city, the Orange Countyand the county Sanitation District have spent about $5 million on studies. Results of three major investigations were to have been released already, but ongoing data analysis and review by independent scientists has led to a delay, Huntington Beach city spokesman Rich Barnard said. Reports now are expected by the end of the month.

The three agencies have taken preemptive action to funnel storm drain runoff to sewage treatment plants. Still, the record number of beaches periodically closed to Orange County swimmers continues to mount.

And one year after the first closure, the lack of answers and plethora of questions remain striking.

The first clue turned up June 29, 1999. A water sample taken that day contained extremely high bacteria levels. Health officials went on immediate alert, suspecting that raw human sewage was hitting the beach. Two days and more polluted samples later, a mile-long stretch of Huntington State Beach was closed.

“When it first happened, everyone felt fairly confident we would find the source quickly, repair it and make the problem go way,” said Shirley Dettloff, a Huntington Beach City Councilwoman and a member of the state Coastal Commission. “As we went from closure to closure, quite frankly, it was devastating. We saw the impact economically on those who have businesses along the shore.”

By Aug. 25, more than four miles of ocean was off-limits because of the contamination.

Officials at first looked for a sewage leak, a tactical mistake later criticized by a panel of experts as a waste of valuable time.

A Time of Frustration

The sanitation district drilled hundreds of holes, inspected miles of pipeline and put red dye into its outfall system as part of a $1.4-million strategy.

“It was a very frustrating experience as the summer progressed,” said Michelle Tuchman, former spokeswoman for the Sanitation District. “With every new effort, the hope of finding the exact source was very high. Every time, the test results came back negative. Our hopes were dashed.”

Charles McGee, laboratory supervisor for microbiology at the sanitation district, said investigators had to pursue sewage first because it posed the greatest health threat.

Construction work on a new hotel next to the Waterfront Hilton also was considered a possible source because the project involved drawing one million gallons of water out of the ground per day, filtering it and pumping it into a channel that flows into the ocean.

The first major break came in January, when researchers from UC Irvine released a study that pointed to Talbert Marsh, in combination with urban runoff and ocean tides, as a key contributor to last summer’s pollution and a continuing source of concern.

Times staff writer David Reyes contributed to this story.