Pollution Theory Upends Testing

For two decades, water quality tests seemed to prove that piping partially treated sewage into the ocean four miles off Huntington Beach was cost-effective and safe.

So when high levels of bacteria forced health officials to close the city’s shoreline for most of the summer of 1999 and again in 2000, no one even considered that the Orange County Sanitation District’s “outfall” pipe could be a factor.

Now, however, a group of UC Irvine scientists suspect that the district’s water tests missed a quirky phenomenon: a combination of tidal forces and warm water released by a nearby power plant drawing bacteria-laden sewage toward shore.

If true, it could have a nearly billion-dollar bite for the town known around the world as Surf City, and the 2.2 million users served by the sanitation district in north and central Orange County.

The district will soon begin testing the UCI scientists’ theory. But it will take months, if not years, to know the answer for sure, experts say.

“Nature doesn’t give up its secrets so easily,” said Larry Honeybourne, chief of the county Heath Care Agency’s water quality division.

There is some urgency to find a solution, and not only for the tourist-driven Huntington Beach economy. California’s energy crisis has given momentum to plans to double the capacity of the power plant run by AES-Huntington Beach, a private power generator, by June 1. Scientists question whether starting up another two boiler units could multiply any backwash of sewage.

If the outfall is eventually implicated, the district would have to find other ways to treat 245 million gallons of sewage discharged each day--solutions that could cost at least $400 million over the next decade.

“You’re talking billions of dollars,” said Clinton D. Winant, a physical oceanographer with Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Other Orange County beach communities have had repeated closures because of pollution--sewage spills and urban runoff--but Huntington Beach’s problem has proved particularly vexing. Bird droppings and other pollutants from Talbert Marsh and Santa Ana River runoff are likely culprits. Myriad tests over the past 1 1/2 years indicate that neither the marsh nor the river runoff could account for the volume of pollutants found. Nor could they explain unusually high concentrations of bacteria in the surf just west of the Newland Street power plant.

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Some scientists have scoffed at the UCI researchers’ hypothesis, first offered last November. But results of sanitation district tests, released earlier this month, showed that a finger-shaped plume of bacteria was moving to within about 1 1/4 mile of Huntington Beach’s shores. Sanitation district scientists and engineers were caught off guard by the Nov. 27 tests, since previous monitoring spanning 20 years failed to show that pollutants from the pipe, discharged at a depth of nearly 200 feet four miles offshore, could return so close to the beach.

It was also news to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Water Quality Control Board. Three years ago, both had approved renewal of permits to allow the sanitation district to pump the partially treated effluent offshore.

“We were a little surprised by it,” said Terry Fleming, an EPA environmental scientist in San Francisco. “The basic assumption was that we haven’t seen a problem in 20 years, so it’s likely that the problem doesn’t exist.”

Sewage discharges have long been controversial. Los Angeles used to release partially treated sewage into Santa Monica Bay until fish kills and chronic beach contamination prompted federal lawsuits that lasted more than a decade. Ending the furor cost the city more than $1.6 billion to expand the Hyperion treatment plant near Los Angeles International Airport.

Long after the EPA cracked down on Los Angeles, it has continued to exempt Orange County and three other communities--San Diego, Goleta and Morro Bay--from the provisions of the U.S. Clean Water Act. When federal officials approved Orange County’s exemption in 1998, they cited the sanitation district’s data that the sewage plume floated intact several miles off Huntington Beach.

Sanitation district scientists now say they never tested the waters along the ocean floor. They also failed to consider the impact of the power plant’s intake and discharge pipes, a system less than a mile offshore and which cycles 300 million gallons of ocean water a day.

In December, AES officials began submitting documents to the state in seeking approval to nearly double the capacity of their facility. AES would do that by reactivating two of its five boiler-unit generators, said Ed Blackford, site manager of the power plant.

The two inactive units have not been used since 1995, when California had plenty of inexpensive power. But reactivating them--a $145-million project that the company says would generate enough to power 1,000 homes--also would require the plant to use more ocean water for cooling, Blackford said.

And discharging that heated water could cause more contamination problems at the beach, if the UCI scientists’ theory proves true.

“It’s a little premature to say whether it will be of a concern,” Blackford said. “But clearly we’re in favor of clean beaches, and we want to get to the bottom of the [Huntington Beach pollution] problem just like everyone else.”

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Some scientists believe Huntington Beach’s pollution problems are caused by a confluence of factors: proximity to Talbert Marsh, which is home to large populations of waterfowl and appears to be a breeding ground for bacteria; the mouth of the Santa Ana river, which carries urban runoff to the sea; the power plant; and the sanitation district’s outfall pipe.

Environmentalists are critical of state and federal permits that in 1998 allowed the sanitation district to continue discharging sewage that does not meet the standards of the federal Clean Water Act.

“Orange County has overwhelmed itself by population,” said Mark Massara, coastal programs director for the California chapter of the Sierra Club. “And the fact that you can just dump raw sewage into the ocean and somehow say that you’re protected just doesn’t pass the laugh test. There is no reason that we should be playing fast and loose with the rules.”

But 20 years of water quality tests by the sanitation district and others seemed to show that the sewage stayed clumped together more than two miles offshore. The belief was that a water temperature inversion layer, called a thermocline, acted as a lid to keep pollutants packed together about 45 feet below the surface.

“What was done in 1998 was not a mistake,” said Gerard J. Thibeault, director of the California Water Quality Control Board’s Santa Ana region, which granted a five-year ocean dumping permit to the sanitation district. “At that point there was not any scientific evidence that there was a problem. In fact, all of the scientific evidence pointed to just the opposite.”

The sanitation district wasn’t trying to overlook a backwash of bacteria, officials said. But it may have been looking in the wrong place.

“Historically, we had never seen any evidence of the plume coming into shallower waters,” said district microbiologist Charles McGee. “We assumed that the plume would look like an ink spot or a cloud. We never considered that it would be something that would slide in under the radar. It’s just a different way of looking at it.”

Keith Stolzenbach, a UCLA professor who has studied the sewage plume off Huntington Beach, said Stanley Grant and the other UCI researchers benefited from mountains of data collected by the sanitation district, but also by fresh pairs of eyes.

“The pieces of this theory are not new, but the possibility that these strong surges could bring sewage back to the beach is a very new idea,” Stolzenbach said.

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Some opponents already are organizing to oppose renewal of the EPA exemption when it expires in 2003, should the sanitation district apply for another waiver. The EPA’s Fleming said it is too early to say whether the district will lose the exemption.

“We have to determine if there is a real problem or not,” Fleming said, adding that the sanitation agency “seems to be making a good-faith effort to find out what’s happening.”

Said Scripps’ Winant, “You really can’t rule anything out. There is really not a good understanding of the ocean processes going on out there.”

Fleming and others have not ruled out other possible bacteria sources. Runoff draining into the ocean from the Santa Ana River and Talbert Marsh are still suspects. The marsh, near the beach just north of the Santa Ana River, has a large population of western gulls roosting on mudflats. During storms, the marsh fills up. And tides sweep in and out of the marsh, perhaps carrying bird droppings rich in bacteria.

“The marsh plays a role; it provides a background level of bacteria,” said UCI researcher Brett F. Sanders. “But this mysterious problem near the power plant also occurs” when there have been no storms to increase the marsh runoff.

Robert S. Hoffman, Southern California coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, agreed it was likely that Huntington Beach’s pollution goes beyond bird droppings.

“There are a multitude of wetlands up and down the coast, and none of them have these same type of problems,” said Hoffman.

The sanitation district is forming a panel of scientists to help design a comprehensive ocean monitoring program to test the UCI researchers’ theory this spring and summer. The panel will meet for the first time Monday.

“Whatever happens during the summer could mean significant operational changes for us,” said Lisa Lawson, the district’s spokeswoman.

If the outfall is the source of much of the high concentrations of bacteria, agency officials said, they would have to consider so-called secondary levels of treatment for all sewage discharged. The district now releases a blend of primary and secondary treated sewage.

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In primary treatment, chemicals and thickening agents are used to separate and remove waste solids, which carry the most bacteria. During secondary treatment, or the second level of treatment, naturally occurring bacteria are added to dissolve still more solids.

Lawson said it would take at least four years and cost more than $400 million to build the facilities necessary for full secondary treatment. Operational costs would add $15 million a year.

Even with full secondary treatment, not all of the bacteria would be removed, “so the issue at the beach still might not be resolved,” Lawson said.

The district could opt to disinfect the sewage, extend the 25-year-old outfall pipe farther offshore or build a new one. A new pipe would cost at least $170 million. Still, experts say it isn’t certain this would solve the bacteria problem.

Disinfectant systems could work, but that would cost at least $40 million. And because disinfecting sewage is most effective when used on secondary treated sewage, the cost would balloon to nearly a half-billion dollars.

With rigorous testing still being devised, sanitation district officials caution that it’s far too soon to settle on a plan.

“We want to make sure that we’re doing the right thing so that ratepayers and taxpayers aren’t paying for anything extra,” McGee said. “If we are involved in this in some way, then we’re going to change what we do before anyone tells us that we have to.”

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How Clean?

Sanitation district officials this year will test a theory that sewage discharged from an outfall pipe is coming ashore along Huntington Beach. If the premise proves true, the district will have to change its treatment process. That could mean full secondary treatment, which would cost $400 million for new facilities; disinfecting the waste with chemicals, ultraviolet light or reverse osmosis; or perhaps extending the outfall pipe farther offshore.

* PRELIMINARY TREATMENT

Bar screens remove solids from sewage

Grit remover filters out non-organic materials

* PRIMARY TREATMENT

70% solids removed*

Settling basin removes solids

* SECONDARY TREATMENT

85% solids removed*

Aeration basin breaks up organic material

Settling basin removes micro-organisms

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* Figure refers to percentage of suspended solids & oxygen-depleting compounds removed from treated wastewater

Source: Orange County Sanitation District