A Step Toward Clean Beaches

The decision by the Orange County Sanitation District to take on more diversions of urban runoff water will be a major and welcome departure for the coastal region. Faced with the onslaught of dreary reports about the state of coastal waters, the district has said it will accept as much as 10 million gallons of runoff a day, which will help resort cities like Newport Beach and Huntington Beach.

The district is trying to use an incentive system, agreeing to divert up to 4 million gallons a day at no charge, with all other diversions over that amount paid for by agencies using the district services. Also, diversions currently have been seasonal, running from April 1 through Oct. 15, and the change would be extended to dry days on a year-round basis.

The district is to be commended for its leadership role in taking on more water, thereby alleviating the pressure on these coastal communities. Urban runoff increasingly has been the suspected culprit in beach foulings of recent years, especially contributing to the problems of last summer in Huntington Beach.

Still, a Band-Aid by any name is a Band-Aid, and the larger task of public education remains. Much of this needs to be done upstream, in the watershed area that drains into the coastal waters of Orange County.

Public awareness of ocean pollution has been raised considerably in recent years in Orange County. The dramatic oil spill of the American Trader in 1990 was a benchmark event, but since that time there have been more and more days when the water is off-limits. The high pressure systems of late September brought people flocking to the beach in midsummer form.

The area no doubt would much prefer to have its beaches thought of as fabled sites in the lyrics of Beach Boys songs than as places where people can’t even go swimming. In recent years, the latter has become more of a reality, with broken sewer lines, mysterious pockets of pollution in Huntington Beach and more.

This year, the city, county and Orange County Sanitation District diverted millions of gallons of runoff to a sewage treatment plant, an effort that appeared to provide important relief. This was accompanied by a remarkable sleuthing job, resulting in an inspection for every sewage pipe in Huntington Beach, soil tests and exploration of marshes.

Huntington Beach’s experience shows the degree of investigating that is necessary, and how elusive the search for pollution sources has become. The district emphasizes it will not be able to handle the big amounts of water that gush through channels during rainy season. And the need remains for much better upstream efforts to curb pollution.