For Returning Beachgoers, Coast Isn’t Clear

Beachgoers drawn by sunny skies and rising temperatures this weekend will find a changed coastline struggling to recover from the damage caused by record storms.

The ocean water might look inviting, but beaches all along Southern California’s coast have high bacteria levels. Heal the Bay, a group that tracks water quality, advised swimmers and surfers to wait until as late as Jan. 25 before venturing in.

Officials also cautioned against walking barefoot on the sand or touching it with bare hands. Wet sand, in particular, could still contain potentially harmful bacteria levels from major sewage spills.

“Even if the water isn’t ingested, skin contact alone can cause rashes,” said Hanan Obeidi, a spokeswoman for the Long Beach health department.

Though many have heeded such warnings, a few surfers were out Friday, and more are expected this weekend.

Jason Fitzmaurice of Topanga donned his wetsuit Friday morning and toted his surfboard past a rusted shopping cart and two tires that had washed up at Surfrider near the Malibu Pier, not far from a puddle of untreated sewage.

He said he was aware that there was “a lot of bacteria” in the water. “It does bother me,” he said, “but not as much as sitting around all day.”

In Long Beach, workers on yellow bulldozers have been pushing debris that had flowed down the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers into mounds the size of school buses.

Meanwhile, an oil spill of unknown derivation created a mile-long slick that has coated the wings of hundreds of pelicans and Western grebes from Santa Monica to Santa Barbara.

In the South Bay, officials were assessing significant beach erosion from the recent storms, which pummeled the region with post-Christmas rain that continued through Tuesday.

From the Mexican border to Malibu, dozens of beaches had “Closed” signs; others posted advisories about poor water quality. The storms left California beaches piled high with debris, including soccer balls, milk crates and Styrofoam cups.

Coastal waters, which for a time were chocolate-brown, have started to clear, but the toxic stew from urban runoff and sediment remains.

Linwood Pendleton, an environmental economist who teaches at UCLA, said he expects beaches in more open areas, such as Point Concepcion and Point Dume, to show swift improvement. Healing the beaches along Santa Monica Bay, on the other hand, “is going to take a long time,” he said.

Dusty Crane, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors, said many of the county’s 31 miles of public beaches suffered “tremendous” erosion in the storms.

“We’re trying to figure out how much beach we have” left, she said. “Right now, everybody’s just trying to recover and see what the damage is and get a plan for how best to take care of things.”

She said officials were particularly worried about an area south of Redondo Beach Pier where wave action dumps beach sand into an offshore canyon. Malibu and other beaches, she said, tend to be replenished by normal wave action.

Workers will need weeks, Crane added, to reshape the remaining sand along the shore to eliminate hazardous drop-offs and get the beaches ready for summer sunbathing.

In Long Beach, where the shoreline is framed by two major inland waterways -- the San Gabriel River and the Los Angeles River -- the lingering effects of the storms could be found along the city’s beachfront.

A sewer leak that began Sunday near Eagle Rock dumped 2.4 million gallons of untreated waste into the Los Angeles River, at the rate that first day of 40,000 gallons per hour. Obeidi said the city had been informed by Los Angeles officials that the spill was finally contained Tuesday after the rain had stopped and workers could repair overwhelmed pipes.

Despite signs in the sand warning that the water was off limits, Long Beach lifeguard Capt. Paul Wawrzynski said he saw long-distance swimmers in wetsuits in the surf along Bayshore Avenue and kite-boarders inflating their kites.

On Thursday, before any closed beaches from Long Beach south to the San Diego County line had been reopened, Wawrzynski said, he drove along the coast and could see surfers off Huntington Beach’s bluffs south to Laguna.

Along Orange County’s 42 miles of beaches, stretches of sand remained closed because of dangerous levels of bacteria, said Monica Mazur of the county’s health department. As is typical, the freshwater rivers and channels that drain from inland areas to the ocean were the primary source of sewage and debris, she said. Most beach closures were near river and creek mouths.

Officials said posted warnings have traditionally done little to discourage surfers from entering storm-roiled waters. “I wouldn’t go fishing or go in the water for two weeks,” said Conner Everts, executive director of the Southern California Watershed Alliance. “Only the craziest surfers would go at a time like this.”

Mark Rauscher, a longtime surfer who is environmental director of the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit group devoted to coastal issues that affect surfers, said he would be tempted to return to the water next week -- if the waves were good enough. He advised surfers to reduce the risk of infection by wearing earplugs, avoiding staying underwater for long, rinsing their mouths and showering well.

Despite the disruptions and damage caused by the storms, Everts said it was “exciting to see nature reappear” and reassert itself after years of attempts to force water to flow through man-made channels.

“It’s really an education for people to understand that even a flicked cigarette butt will end up on the beach when it rains like this,” Crane said.

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Times staff writer Steve Chawkins contributed to this report.