Questioning the Value of Beach Pollution Studies

Re “Beach Pollution Source Eludes Scientists Despite Careful Study,” May 16:

It is not surprising that the source of beach pollution in Huntington Beach is still elusive. After spending $5 million on scientific studies, the source of bacteria on the beach is still not known. One reason is that, last summer, scientists were supposed to be testing the AES power plant’s role in drawing sewage from the Orange County Sanitation District’s outfall pipe back toward the shore. The AES plant, though, was largely idle during the study, so $5million went down the drain. Why did the sanitation district carry on this study when it knew the power plant was not fully operational? Was this a wise use of $5 million in taxpayer money?

Rob Nelson

Huntington Beach

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Re “Study Finds No Single Source of ’99 Huntington Coast Pollution,” May 17:

The Orange County Sanitation District now proudly claims that its latest study found no evidence that the daily release of about 240 million gallons of partially treated waste water has any connection to the problem.

Adding insult to injury, the district has amassed a considerable cash reserve while warning residents that it will be costly to treat effluent to standards set by the Clean Water Act. The district has abrogated its responsibility to provide the county a solution to ocean pollution. The district is hiding behind studies to avoid doing today what it will have to do in the future. Every day the district delays taking action to increase the level of water treatment, the price of the eventual solution increases.

I want the district to design the most effective sewage treatment plant that will create a sustainable solution that will maintain clean ocean water and beaches for future generations. Let them then come to the people and ask for the funding. What matters most is that we protect our coastline so that people and marine life will have a clean ocean.

Jeff Lebow

Huntington Beach

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Getting a grip on events at the Orange County Sanitation District takes a lot of digging. The district maintains a staff of three to deflect attention and cast the issues in terms that steer away from troublesome areas.

All of the sanitation district’s ocean studies are directed toward one purpose: protecting the district’s ability to use the ocean to dispose of sewage solids. To do this, the studies are aimed at trying to identify onshore sources of sewage pollution.

Doug Korthof

Seal Beach

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I read with distress Christopher Evans’ suggestion that Orange County Sanitation District funding could lead to invalidating the recent Huntington Beach contamination study. A scientific career is a lifetime commitment to objective and impartial research. Any falsification or mishandling of data could ruin a scientist’s career.

The $5million provided by the district to study transport of the outfall plume may sound like a lot of money, but a great deal of that goes to instrumentation, paying for a ship and 24-hour water sampling. An individual scientist receives only a few months’ salary, maybe a year at most.

Scientists love what they do, and it would be absurd to jeopardize a career for a single project. Scientific ethics are not for sale.

Cynthia Cudaback

Marine Science Institute,

UC Santa Barbara

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After a three-hour report from the scientific panel that has been studying the ocean off Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, we learned that they could not say whether the sewage discharge affected the beach. After spending $5 million, we still do not have a definitive study. We do know, however, that Orange County Sanitation District is at odds with the Clean Water Act.

The district should have begun giving secondary treatment to sewage 17 years ago, but the board continues to fight it. The district sends 240 million gallons of sewage into our ocean every day. I strongly urge the district’s board members to provide at least secondary treatment for all sewage that goes into the ocean, and not to fall prey to district management’s bullheaded policies and its strange notion of science.

Nancy Donaven

Huntington Beach

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I am writing to express my outrage over the fact that the taxpayers paid $5 million to watch grown men float grapefruits off the coast of Huntington Beach--and not come to a conclusion on what is causing the pollution. The ocean in that area contains 200 billion gallons of seawater. It doesn’t take a scientist to realize that the pollution problem isn’t linked to a toilet, a trailer park full of toilets or a storm drain. We do have a 6-foot diameter pipe that pumps 240 million gallons of human waste a day into the ocean.

Please fix the sewage treatment plant and quit wasting my money.

James Jones

Costa Mesa

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One newspaper article led with the line that the “plume is innocent.” The reporter listened to the same scientific testimony that I did, but arrived at a different conclusion. The only people who have ever insisted that the plume is innocent are Orange County Sanitation District employees.

There is a huge difference between innocent and not proven guilty, a distinction that is being lost in the spin. The pipe has not been indicted, but not because there was no crime. Scientists who participated in the ill-fated study that was purportedly undertaken to test a possible disturbance of the plume by the influx and reflux of 300 million gallons of ocean water a day by the AES power plant cooling system have never said the plume was innocent.

It is tragic that more than 20 years ago, the sanitation district could have used federal funds to preclude this discussion, and by now, nothing would be spewing out of the pipe. We would be reclaiming the water for use or for sale and would be making a tidy profit on sludge being recycled into fertilizer.

Plume movement aside, using the ocean as a toilet for economic reasons in the arguably richest county in the world is unconscionable. No one with even a modicum of common sense or decency can rebut that indictment.

Don McGee

Huntington Beach

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It’s clear that pollution at our local beaches comes from multiple sources. Stanley Grant’s research indicates that the most polluted sites are those close to storm drains and river outflows. Environmental scientists call this kind of pollution urban runoff. No single “magic bullet” will solve the problem.

The deeper problem involves all of our communities. It is basically that our urban and suburban lifestyles are unsustainable.

Some technical fixes, like increasing the treatment of sewage, will help. But such action alone will not be sufficient.

If we really want our children and grandchildren to be able to enjoy our beaches in the same way that we have, then we will need to make some broader changes. These will involve our transportation systems, our chemically laden landscaping practices and our overall misuse of water.

Surely in a county that has been labeled “conservative,” one of the most important things we would like to conserve is the legacy of our beaches.

Karl Reitz

Brea