Beach warnings questioned

Alicia Robinson

The warning system that tells beach users when water is contaminated

is inherently flawed, potentially leaving swimmers and surfers at

risk, according to one of three new studies of Orange County water

quality co-written by a professor at UC Irvine.

The critique of the beach posting system was one of several

findings in the studies, which are expected to be published online

this week by Environmental Science & Technology, a journal of the

American Chemical Society.

Also in the studies, the finding that the Santa Ana River and

Talbert Marsh are the biggest sources of certain contaminants in

waters off Huntington Beach, not only during the wet season, but also

in dry weather.

“I don’t think we’re surprised by the results,” Huntington Beach

City Councilwoman Connie Boardman said. “We have been taking action

since 1999 when we had the beach closures to try to resolve the parts

of it that we have control over.”

UC Irvine environmental engineering professor Stanley Grant, one

of the studies’ authors, said the three papers compiled information

that’s been collected since before the rash of beach closures that

kept people in Huntington Beach dry in the summer of 1999. The

studies mainly looked at levels for total coliform, bacteria that can

indicate the presence of sewage.

“There’s been a lot of data collected over the last five years,

and so one of our goals was to go back retrospectively to see if it

could tell a bigger story,” Grant said.

One paper concludes that the state’s beach water quality warning

system has serious problems, partly because of the lag time between

when water samples are taken and tested and when a beach posting or

closure notice goes up, Grant said.

“A lot of people, I think, have been suspecting that for a long

time but what’s different here is we’ve put numbers on it to actually

show how bad it is,” he said.

Beach postings, which warn people that contaminant levels in the

water exceed state standards, are sometimes not there when they

should be or are posted when the water meets standards. In Huntington

Beach, for instance, the beach posting error rate approaches 41%,

Grant said.

“The diabolical aspect of this reporting system is that when you

need it the most, it fails you,” he said.

The studies also found that systems to trap and treat urban runoff

are largely ineffective because most pollutants -- about 99% -- enter

coastal waters during a few heavy winter storms. When water flows are

heaviest, the diversion system that sends runoff to the sanitation

district for treatment can’t be used because it would overwhelm the

sanitation district’s capacity, Grant said.

While the Santa Ana River and Talbert Marsh were named as the

biggest sources of contaminants in Huntington Beach waters, Grant

said pollutants have come from a bewildering list of sources,

including bird droppings in the marsh, runoff from AES Corp.’s power

plant and leaking sanitary sewer lines. That can make it difficult to

know which pollutant sources to attack, he said.

The Santa Ana River also borders Newport Beach, but the city

suffers less from contamination because waves often come from the

south, pushing polluted water toward Huntington Beach, Grant said.

But contaminated beaches aren’t just an issue for Huntington Beach

and the city can’t address it alone, Boardman said.

“It’s going to take the cooperation of a lot of inland cities as

well to solve the problem,” she said.

To improve the beach posting system, Grant suggested using

long-term data on bacteria levels to tell people the likelihood that

a beach’s waters are safe.

Bob Caustin, founding director of Defend the Bay, also supports

changes to the state’s beach posting system, which he called “fatally

flawed.”

He would like to see an average score posted on the beaches that

would be based on previous closures, he said.

“People don’t know, people don’t realize that they’re swimming in

excrement, and that’s the problem you have with the warning system

today,” Caustin said.

Defend the Bay will place a beach scorecard with a lettered

ranking system on its website within the next month, he said.

* ALICIA ROBINSON is a reporter with Times Community News. She may

be reached at (949) 764-4330 or by e-mail at

alicia.robinson@latimes.com.