18,000-Gallon Sewage Spill Closes Laguna’s Crescent Bay

Crescent Bay in Laguna Beach is off-limits to swimming and surfing because of an 18,000-gallon sewage spill, said Larry Honeybourne, chief of the county Heath Care Agency’s water quality division. The spill is the 11th to close a beach in Orange County this year.

The spill occurred Thursday afternoon after a pump station became jammed with a sand-and-cement slurry, said Steve May, Laguna Beach city engineer. A worker with Cody Engineering of Norwalk was building a diversion that would stop urban runoff from fouling the bay. He inadvertently washed 3 cubic yards of the dense slurry into a sewer manhole on Cliff Drive.

It traveled 250 feet into a reservoir that normally holds sewage before it is pumped to a treatment plant. The slurry clogged the pumps, causing them to spin for two hours without actually pumping and triggering an alarm about 4:30 p.m. The city is evaluating whether the pumping station is damaged.

City employees worked overnight to create a sand berm on the beach and recovered about 16,000 gallons of waste. But 2,000 gallons flowed into Crescent Bay. The idyllic cove in north Laguna Beach will be closed for three days.

Contact with the water could cause gastrointestinal, upper-respiratory, eye, ear, nose or throat infections. Children, the elderly and people with weak immune systems are especially susceptible to pathogens found in human waste.

Laguna Beach has a history of sewer problems. The Crescent Bay closure is the third in Laguna Beach this year. In August, state water officials fined the city $60,000 for a string of sewage spills that closed beaches.