Of Summer and Sewage

Surfers shredding the breakers and parents helping toddlers slosh through the shorebreak have every right to question why the Orange County Sanitation District is allowed to pump more bacteria, human waste and other organic matter into the ocean than most other districts. The answer is a federal waiver that holds the district’s waste water treatment to a less rigorous standard under the Clean Water Act. It’s a waiver that no longer makes sense.

Orange County has grown enormously since the Environmental Protection Agency first granted the exemption, one of 36 nationally, in 1985. Today, its sanitation district is the largest holder of a waiver anywhere. It’s time for the EPA to make sure Orange County subjects its discharged water to the same treatment standard as many other densely populated areas, including Los Angeles.

The waiver expires in 2003, and scientists and environmentalists are already voicing concerns about the wisdom of piping a plume of partially treated sewage four miles offshore and hoping that it won’t drift back to plague swimmers. In 1999, a baffling series of beach closings threatened Huntington Beach’s economy. Last fall, UC Irvine researchers questioned the model that had predicted the offshore topography would trap the “moderately treated” sewage and hold it at a safe distance. One theory the district will test this summer suggests that a nearby power plant’s suction of ocean water to cool equipment is bringing in sewage too.

To its credit, the district has promised to take steps to improve treatment after the results are in, but piecemeal measures won’t do. At some point, common sense must take over, and ratepayers will have to bite the bullet and do the job right. Estimates put the cost of the advanced treatment that removes more solid waste at more than $400 million to build new facilities and $15 million a year in operating costs. It would be money well spent.

Orange County’s beaches withstand urban runoff from the Santa Ana River and bacterial waste from water fowl in the Talbert Marsh area. The hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage discharged daily from the district’s outfall pipe should be as clean as possible.

The ways of the ocean tides and currents are a mysterious wonder. But every beachgoer knows one thing intuitively: As resilient as this great resource is, we can’t afford to treat it as a sewer.