O.C. Pulls Out Stops to Keep Beaches Clean

In hopes of avoiding another crippling Huntington Beach summer closure, Orange County officials plan to announce today a sweeping set of measures to keep bacteria-laden urban runoff from hitting the ocean.

Timed to coincide with the busy beach tourist season, the $276,000 plan to divert and treat millions of gallons of runoff a day, then pipe it five miles out to sea, is unprecedented in scope for Orange County. From June through Labor Day, the measures will include erecting concrete barriers, sandbag walls, and even temporary sand berms at the mouths of major waterways.

Scores of storm drains and more than a dozen water pumping stations will also be rerouted to sewage treatment plants.

“The county is really committed to quality of life in Orange County,” said Mary Anne Skorpanich, special projects manager for the county’s public facilities and resources department. “We’re doing this so we can balance all of the components that go into quality of life--environmental protection and recreational opportunities.”

Area business owners are elated with the county’s plans.

“Our reputation has been among the finest beaches in the nation,” said Steve Bone, president of the Robert Mayer Corp., which developed the Waterfront Hilton and is building the Hilton Grand Resort next door. “With the [efforts] that are going on now I’m very confident we’re going to remain one of cleanest beaches in the nation.”

But environmentalists said the plans to divert urban runoff to a sewage treatment plant for the summer months are a Band-Aid fix.

“This is by no means a complete solution. I’m always concerned that when the public sees these diversions that they think we don’t have to worry,” said Christopher J. Evans, executive director of the Surfrider Foundation, based in San Clemente.,

Officials have been closely watching Huntington Beach, hoping to avoid a repeat of last summer’s economically draining two-month closure. Despite extensive studies that have cost nearly $2 million, the cause of last summer’s problems remains elusive. Urban runoff from Talbert Marsh and the Santa Ana River are suspected to be contributing factors.

The specter of another summer of closed beaches escalated when bacteria levels began rising along Huntington Beach in late March.

Asked why the county had spent so much time and money on studies, but done nothing comprehensive to deal with the pollution for the last 11 months, Skorpanich said officials kept hoping that the source of the pollution would be pinpointed.

The plans include:

* Divert urban runoff from the Greenville Banning Channel, Talbert Channel and upstream portions of the Santa Ana River to an Orange County Sanitation District treatment facility from June 7 to Sept. 4, which is Labor Day.

The runoff will be stopped from entering major waterways in the coastal zone using sandbag and concrete barriers, then diverted to the district’s sewage treatment plant next to the Santa Ana River.

* Reroute flow from 16 pump stations and 49 storm drains to the sewage treatment plant during the same time period.

* Erect temporary sand barriers at the mouths of the Santa Ana River and Talbert Marsh during high-tide cycles to stop massive water exchanges, starting June 11. These barriers will be in place for a maximum of 10 days.

The millions of gallons of urban runoff will be partially treated at the plant, to a level still containing bacteria and viruses. However, it will be released from an underwater pipe five miles offshore and will quickly disperse, said Robert P. Ghirelli, manager of technical services for the Orange County Sanitation District.

Treating urban runoff has become increasingly popular in Southern California. On Thursday, Los Angeles County announced it would reroute and treat runoff from five locations. Orange County and five coastal cities recently sought $1.2 million from various sources to pay for redirecting dirty water from up to 30 storm drain and pump stations from Huntington Beach to San Clemente.

The increasing frequency of such plans worries some environmentalists. Evans of Surfrider said many East Coast states tried combining sewage and storm drain treatment in the 1950s and ‘60s and are now spending millions to fix resulting problems.

“It turned out to be a colossal failure,” he said, because the plants simply couldn’t handle the flow.

Skorpanich said such worries are unfounded because the county recognizes this approach is temporary.

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Short-Term Beach Fix

To prevent the kind of bacterial problems that plagued Huntington Beach’s shore last summer, the county plans to temporarily keep millions of gallons of runoff from entering the ocean daily.

PROPOSED DIVERSIONS:

Sandbag or concrete barriers: placed upstream to prevent runoff from entering major coastal zone waterways; water will be diverted to sewage treatment facility.

Pumping stations and storm drains (not show): their runoff flow is to be rerouted to sewage treatment plant.

Sand barriers at river and channel mouths: to prevent large ocean-runoff water exchanges during high-tide cycles.