Researchers Hunt Cause of Fouled Beach in ’99
The Orange County Sanitation District will unveil plans today for a multimillion-dollar study to determine what caused the devastating beach closures in Huntington Beach during the summer of 1999.
A number of agencies will spend about $4.1 million to conduct the study, which is scheduled to begin May 21.
Results are expected in June 2002.
Researchers will use water-quality data, near-shore sediment analysis, historical data and other information.
They will also test a hypothesis by UCI scientist Stanley Grant. Grant theorized that the sanitation district’s treated sewage plume, released four miles offshore, is being brought back to the surf zone by tides, waves and a power plant’s ocean-water-fed cooling system.
The sanitation district, the city and Orange County already have spent several million dollars trying to figure out what caused high bacteria counts during that summer, which led to a costly two-month closure.
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