Grand Jury Is Praised for Sewage-Study Action

Re “Negative Study on Sewage Was Withheld,” April 25:

I commend the Orange County Grand Jury for investigating and criticizing the Orange County Sanitation District for not releasing the 1996, 20-meter study in a timely manner. The district did not release a written report on this study until March 2002. This is inexcusable, and the district should be reprimanded and penalized. Had this study been public in 1996, perhaps the district would not have been able to change the Santa Ana River Basin Plan standards in 1997, and perhaps the district would not have gotten a 301(h) waiver from the EPA and Water Quality Control Board in 1998 to discharge partially secondary treated wastewater.

Perhaps the sewage would have been disinfected in 1999, preventing the disastrous beach closures in Huntington Beach that year that caused millions of dollars in economic losses. The study found three days in 1996 when there was simultaneous evidence of near-shore and surf zone contamination by coliform bacteria, suggesting a correlation between the sewage plume and bacteria on the shore.

It is the district’s manipulation of data after the discovery and suppression of the unpublished study that I find most repugnant and worthy of punishment.

Jan D. Vandersloot

Newport Beach

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The sanitation district is playing games with public health. I think that any board members who served before March 2002 should be immediately removed, and the district’s waiver should be immediately rescinded since it was obtained using false information. Decisive, quick action is required to prevent further damage to our ocean, our beaches and the health of Orange County citizens and visitors.

Elliot Gordon

Irvine