Part of Beach Near Spill Is Reopened

County health officials on Friday reopened a portion of the coastline that has been off-limits to swimmers since 440,000 gallons of sewage spilled into the ocean at Aliso Creek earlier this week.

Monica Mazur, environmental health specialist for the Orange County Health Care Agency, said part of the 1 1/2-mile stretch of closed beach was partially reopened at 3:15 p.m. after she reviewed results of water tests. About 800 feet of coastline north of the Aliso Pier remains closed, and Mazur declined to predict when it might reopen.

“We’ll again review the data” today, she said.

The spill, which began at 3 a.m. Tuesday and continued unabated for four hours, was the second largest sewage spill in Orange County since 1993, Mazur said.

It occurred when a pump station operated by Moulton Niguel Water District failed, causing sewage to back up in the line and eventually spill through a manhole cover beside Aliso Creek, which flows to Aliso Beach.

“We thought we had a fail-safe system,” said Jim Smith, director of operations for the district. “We should have gotten alarms that said there was a problem, but we didn’t.”

Smith said high winds that night may have caused a glitch in the computer system that activates the alarm. He said his agency will work to prevent a recurrence.

“We’re going to have to put in some type of fail-safe back-up system, something that would definitely alarm us,” he said.

Mazur said the county was notified of the spill at 11 a.m. Tuesday, and the beach was closed about 30 minutes later. Since then, county health officials have been measuring fecal coliform counts in the water daily. Coliform counts are indicators of disease-producing fecal contamination.

Aliso Beach is one of the most frequently closed beaches in the county, having been shut down about two dozen times over the past decade.

Residents along that stretch of coastline were angry and disturbed by the latest spill, said Scott Shand, 41, a surfer who lives near Aliso Beach.

“Quite simply, this area is very expensive to live in, but it’s worth everything it costs,” he said. “Then to have something like this take away from why you live here is very depressing.”

Shand said residents also worry that shifting tides can push polluted waters to areas that are not marked off-limits, making swimmers and surfers sick.

“As a surfer, that’s one of the real problems we all face out in the water,” he said. “We get quite often sick from this, not even realizing it’s a beach that should be closed because it’s abutting one that is.”

The spill also frustrated Laguna Beach city officials, who have been grappling with ways to improve area water quality and hoping to get their inland neighbors involved in solving creek and ocean pollution problems.

“Everybody has to understand they’re all contributing to the problem in that creek,” Councilman Wayne L. Peterson said. “And we’re the ones at the ocean that are having to live with the result.”