Sinkhole Ruptures Sewage Pipe, Closing Beach

Health officials closed another stretch of Orange County beach Sunday after a water main and sewage pipe ruptured in Dana Point, causing a sinkhole that swallowed part of a residential intersection and sent about 8,000 gallons of untreated waste into the ocean.

The chain of events was set off at 5:11 a.m., when the pipes burst at the intersection of Calle Loma and Calle Fortuna, near Capistrano Beach County Park. Contractors said Sunday that they were not sure yet what caused the rupture, but they believe it is related to ongoing work on storm drains in the neighborhood, which has been prone to flooding during winter storms.

Health officials closed the beach a quarter-mile above and below the flood control channel near the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Palisades Drive, at Capistrano Beach County Park, said Larry W. Honeybourne, an environmental health engineering specialist with the public health department of the county’s health care agency. North of Capistrano Beach, Doheny Beach was on advisory, but people were still allowed to swim.

The beach will remain closed to swimming and surfing until at least Wednesday afternoon, pending the result of water testing over the next three days. Contact with sewage-laden water can cause gastrointestinal, respiratory, eye, ear, nose and throat problems, as well as rashes.

Orange County has logged an unusually high 24 beach closures so far this year, Honeybourne said. In all of 1999, beach closures affected the county’s 42-mile shoreline 22 times.

As families gathered for Mother’s Day picnics on the sand, lifeguards tacked up now-familiar yellow beach closure signs along the half-mile of tainted shoreline, and patrolled the coast in a white pickup truck to make sure that people weren’t in the water, said lifeguard director Dennis Yune.

Despite the warnings, the beaches were crowded on this balmy Sunday, and a few children cavorted in the surf, said lifeguard Api Weinert. By midafternoon, Weinert estimated that he had explained to about 150 people why they had to stay out of the water.

“You can see the signs, but people get tunnel vision and are so focused when they come to the beach, they don’t see [the warnings],” he said shortly after fishing a child out of the water.

On the bluffs above the beach, members of the Conroy family awoke before dawn to the sounds of water gushing through their tree-lined neighborhood. Rushing out into the darkness, they noticed water spewing out of the gaping hole in front of their home. Did someone hit the fire hydrant? Ana Conroy wondered.

“It sounded like Niagara Falls,” said her mother-in-law, Doris Conroy, who lives across the street. The family called 911.

Afraid that drivers might not see the ever-widening maw, the Conroys grabbed orange cones from the nearby construction site and placed them around the sinkhole. Barefoot and in her bathrobe, Ana Conroy directed traffic around the garage-sized sinkhole, measuring about 25 by 15 feet across and 10 feet deep.

Workers from the South Coast Water District were the first to arrive after several police officers. They shut off the water and quickly began to repair the sewage pipe.

By midmorning, workers had capped the water main with plastic, but rivulets of water still seeped out. The sewage pipe was temporarily mended with plastic piping and rerouted, said water district General Manager Michael P. Dunbar. An exposed gas line remained intact, even though it had been bent by the force of falling asphalt.

“Sewage was going right into the new storm drain that the contractor had installed,” Dunbar said. “The drain hits [Pacific Coast Highway] and goes right out into the beach.”

Four homes lost water when the line was turned off, but service was quickly restored with a temporary water line from a fire hydrant.

Since January, Dana Point has been adding storm drains to the neighborhood, which City Manager John Behorski identified as the oldest section of town. The storm drains are being installed about five or six feet below existing sewer lines.

Bob Hartwell, foreman for SJ Burkhardt General Engineering Contractors of Riverside, said he was not sure what caused the rupture.

His workers were installing the storm drain Friday. City officials had wanted the street open for a weekend wedding and block party, so the crew filled the trench and covered it with a steel plate for the weekend.

Sunday afternoon, Hartwell’s crew was back at work, shoring up one side of the hole in an effort to avoid further damage to utilities. The area was fenced off and buttressed with steel plates.

Concern about forecasts of rain for today will speed their work, Hartwell said, and they will attempt to finish up the storm drain in that section, repair the water main and cover it before any showers.

He said he suspected that a heavy vehicle may have driven over the trench plate and somehow damaged the pipes, but he wasn’t sure.

“It could’ve been all kinds of things,” Hartwell said.