Surf City overshadowed

Eron Ben-Yehuda

The recent waves of misfortune lapping onto Surf City’s shore threaten to

drown its reputation as a beach paradise.

“It’s giving Huntington Beach kind of a bad name,” said Traci Adams,

manager House of Flys, a Downtown sunglass store. “I wouldn’t come here

if I was a tourist.”

The city’s drive to attract visitors from out of town began in the early

1980s and slowly picked up steam with the Pierside Pavilion opening in

1989 and Pier Plaza, often characterized as the gem in the city’s

redevelopment crown, unveiled last year.

Future plans call for hotels to be built by the Waterfront Hilton and

along the 500 block Pacific Coast Highway, but they depend on the growing

attraction of a town now seemingly plagued by chronic ocean pollution.

To make the problem even pricklier, hypodermic needles washed ashore last

week.

The city’s director of community services, Ron Hagan, says he’s concerned

about the impact these events will have on the city’s economy.

“The longer these problems continue, the more long term damage its going

to do,’ he said.

The solution to the city’s ills will come in finding the sources of beach

contamination, he said. But that’s easier said than done as officials

continue to struggle in their efforts to pinpoint the problem.

Finding those responsible for discarding about a thousand hypodermic

needles will prove difficult because they had no identifying marks such

as serial numbers, said Monica Mazur, an environmental health specialist

for the Orange County Health Agency. And she doesn’t expect the culprits

to come forward and confess their wrongdoing, she said.

“I don’t think anyone is going to give them a prize for it,” she said.

Certainly not surfer Mark Pauperas, 33, of Huntington Beach, who planned

to dive in the water just south of the pier Sept. 16 when he noticed a

few of the two-inch needles that had drifted onto the wet sand. The

syringes were capped with a blue plastic top, but the other end was

missing leaving a sharp point exposed, Mazur said.

“I almost stepped on one,” Pauperas said.

Health officials closed about two miles of beach, from Newland Street to

10th Street north of the pier, until the following day when no more

needles were discovered, Mazur said. They’re the kind used to inject

anesthetic at dental offices, she said.

While bacteria readings off most of the Huntington Beach shoreline stayed

within state health standards, the origin of the contamination remains a

mystery, she said. Officials have come to the realization that the

problem may be due to different sources at different times.

“Ultimately, we might not be in a position to unequivocally say, ‘This

was the cause,’ ” she said.

That doesn’t bode well for the city’s future, but Adams counts on short

memories to pull Huntington Beach through.

“By next summer, people will already forget,” she said. “They’ll probably

forget next month. Hopefully.”