What’s Polluting Our Waves? The Waiver

Re “Beach Season Ebbs With Record Closures,” Sept. 9:

The paramount reason for the closures went unmentioned: the Orange County Sanitation District’s 301(h) waiver. This waiver allows the district to put 240 million gallons a day of partially treated sewage into our ocean.

The district has the money; they should spend it for full secondary treatment to comply with the Clean Water Act. Hiding behind this waiver allows poorly treated, bacteria-laden sewage to be dumped four miles out and 200 feet deep. This discharge forms a plume, which then moves in mysterious ways.

More than $5 million is being spent this summer to solve this mystery, including tests conducted by the district to prove or disprove that hot water discharged from the AES plant is bringing the plume back to shore. The only problem is that the plant generators have been silent while most of the tests were conducted because they were being overhauled.

Orange County communities deserve clean, healthy coastal waters. Do us a favor: Get rid of the waiver!

Eileen Murphy

Huntington Beach

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Orange County beaches were hit with more health warnings and closures this summer than ever before. Could it be that the sewage from 2.4 million people in Orange County is actually reaching the shore and polluting the beaches? It is apparent from the Orange County Sanitation District’s own data that the plume has come to shore in the past. A slide presentation at a February 2000 meeting of experts analyzing the Huntington Beach 1999 beach closure problem showed very clearly that on more than one occasion the plume was adjacent to, or at, the shoreline, especially in Newport Beach. It is time for the district to own up to its responsibility, acknowledge its role in ocean and beach pollution and start treating the sewage to the full secondary standards mandated by the 1972 federal Clean Water Act. It is time to stop hiding behind the waiver it has used to avoid full treatment of the sewage. The beaches and ocean are just too important to play games with waivers.

Jan D. Vandersloot

Director, Ocean Outfall Group Newport Beach

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The sanitation district’s continued dumping of only partially treated sewage is an easy problem to fix; we have the money and we have the space and know-how. We can get rid of the waiver, as more than 15,000 other districts have done. Only 36 districts, of which Orange County’s is now the largest, still cling to the waiver.

The district and our purposeful, sanctioned dumping of primary sewage must not be submerged in the two other huge problems facing Orange County that are not so easily solved. Both of them are the result of rampant overbuilding in the coastal zone, and will take some real money and new techniques to deal with:

* Crumbling sewer pipes and other infrastructure needs.

* Urban runoff from too much concrete where habitat used to be.

The district has already spent upward of $40 million trying to prove that its sewage plume is harmless. The money would be better spent meeting our obligations under common sense--and the Clean Water Act--to fully treat our waste products before inflicting them on others.

Doug Korthof

Seal Beach

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Re “Study: Sewage Stays Offshore,” Aug. 16:

Orange County residents and visitors should not be too encouraged when reviewing the preliminary ocean pollution study findings released by the sanitation district. The headline appears to be good news. It is not.

Although I am not a scientist, it does not take one to recognize that when a huge plume of waste water, released four miles offshore, is measured to have come within a mile of the beach, we are all in trouble. As the intake and warm outflow of the nearby electric generation plant is suspected of contributing to beach-closing ocean pollution, it is especially disturbing to see these results when the AES power plant is not even near full operation.

To make matters worse, OCSD is spending money to hire Scott Baugh, a politician, to influence community leaders to support the district’s agenda, the 301(h) waiver renewal.

What in God’s polluted ocean can Baugh add to this discussion? What an incredible waste of money by our sanitation district. Baugh may be a nice person, but any of the local elected officials serving on their city council or the sanitation district board who are influenced by anything said by this hired gun deserve to be in the crosshairs of a recall by their citizens. Better yet, how about an ocean swim?

Jeff Lebow

Huntington Beach