Crews keep up search for beach pollution

Eron Ben-Yehuda

With the spreading ocean contamination closing another section of

beach to swimmers, sanitation workers will begin drilling for water

samples at a new location today.

“It’s a new lead,” said Michelle Tuchman, a spokeswoman for the Orange

County Sanitation District. “We look at every lead as something

promising.”

Ground-penetrating radar showed “a blip on the screen” at a previously

untested section of parking lot at Huntington State Beach near Newland

Street and Pacific Coast Highway, she said.

The “blip” could be a pipe or “other conduit” releasing

contaminated water into the ocean, she said.

Once covering a 5,000-foot stretch of Huntington State Beach, the

unhealthy levels of bacteria have spread more than three miles all the

way to Huntington Beach Pier, said Larry Honeybourne, program chief for

the water quality section of the Orange County Health Care Agency.

Officials still don’t know the source of the contamination, he said.

“It appears that -- wherever the source is -- the contamination is

moving up the coast,” he said.

Testing of the three-quarter-mile stretch of city beach closed

Tuesday shows levels of bacteria three times above acceptable standards,

he said. Other sections of beach tested since the initial closure July 1

indicated even higher levels of contamination, he said.

After visually searching most of its sewer lines for cracks to no

avail, the Orange County Sanitation District believes “old unknown” pipes

may be to blame, Tuchman said.

“They’re on nobody’s books,” she said. “Who knows what was here?”

With no answers as to the cause of contamination after nearly two

months of searching, district officials are even taking suggestions from

concerned local residents who have called in speculating that the source

may be storm drain runoff, she said.

“We are examining any and all theories,” she said.

Trying to look on the bright side in what is fast becoming a health

disaster, Tuchman said miles of city beach remain open for swimmers to

enjoy, but resident Katie Dooley, 42, isn’t taking any chances.

“I live a block from the beach and my kids surf, but I won’t let

them go in the water,” she said.