Dana Point, Agency Blame Each Other for Sewage Spill

The city of Dana Point and the local water treatment agency blamed each other Monday for an 8,000-gallon sewage spill that closed half a mile of beach, the 24th such incident in Orange County so far this year.

The beach will be closed until at least Wednesday afternoon, the required 72-hour period after a spill is discovered. Orange County health officials will conduct daily tests to determine when it is safe to reopen the beach. The sewage leak that closed a stretch of Dana Point shoreline starting early Sunday came from an old, weakened line that city officials said Monday may have been seeping raw waste undetected into the ground for some time.

Officials for the South Coast Water District disagreed, saying there was no evidence of seepage although the clay pipe dating to 1933 did have hairline cracks. They blame a city contractor for causing the leak during excavation work in the area.

The spill closed half a mile of county beach in Dana Point after a water main and sewage line ruptured, creating a large sinkhole at Calle Loma and Calle Fortuna in a neighborhood close to the beach. Contractors had been installing a 72-inch storm drain pipe below the parallel water and sewage lines. It was first believed that improper dirt compacting caused the ground to shift, breaking the lines.

Bob Warren, Dana Point’s director of public works, said the sewage line was leaking when workers began excavating dirt Friday in preparation for installing the new storm drain pipe.

But Mike Dunbar, general manager for the water district, said that while the 10-inch line that serves about 100 homes did have hairline cracks, it was not seeping when district workers inspected it Friday.

Attempts to reach officials at S.J. Burkhardt General Engineering Contractors of Riverside, which was installing the storm drain pipe, were unsuccessful Monday.

Water quality enforcement officials say Sunday’s incident is indicative of a greater problem facing Orange County’s sewage systems that has led to more beach closures this year caused by sewage spills than in all of 1999.

Dana Point had been adding storm drains because the neighborhood, in the oldest section of town, is prone to flooding.

Times correspondent Ana Beatriz Cholo contributed to this report.