Report: few resources to combat beach pollution
Alex Coolman
Stricter water quality laws are creating an overwhelming workload for
county water agencies, which do not have adequate staff or resources to
deal with beach pollution, according to a report released Tuesday by the
Orange County Grand Jury.
The 1999 passage of Assembly Bill 411 has more than doubled the workload
of the Orange County Public Health Lab in Santa Ana, but staffing is not
sufficient to respond to the increased data flow, the report concludes.
The health lab and the Orange County Health Agency are responsible for
testing the ocean water along the coast of Newport Beach for
contamination.
In cases of sewage spills, like the one that fouled Newport waters near
the Santa Ana River in May, they are charged with closing the beaches.
But it’s in dealing with routine testing, and coming up with solutions to
ongoing problems like urban runoff, that the agencies face their greatest
resource challenge.
The grand jury report notes that the offices are unable to help other
county agencies with water testing or perform other simple tasks because
of personnel limitations.
“There is no staff time available to conduct research and development or
to evaluate any promising new testing procedures,” the report states.
Assembly Bill 411, passed last summer, increased the variety of tests
that are performed at beaches and introduced stricter standards for
posting public health warnings.
In the wake of the new legislation, said Karen Evarts, a grand jury
member and the principal author of the report, county facilities have
been stretched to their limits.
“We were just not impressed with the lack of computer facilities and the
lack of manpower. They’re literally using these Excel spreadsheets spread
out on a table and using a felt-tip pen” to analyze test data, she said.
In response to the problem, the grand jury report makes several
recommendations, including:
* Hiring additional staff, including microbiologists and analysts;
* Updating the technology used by the Public Health Lab and the Orange
County Health Care Agency;
* Posting more current and accurate information on the Health Care
Agency’s Web site.
Monica Mazur, a spokesperson for the Health Care Agency, said the grand
jury’s characterization of the county resource crunch was accurate.
“The workload increased tremendously” with the new legislation, she said.
“All this data is coming in from different labs at different times of the
day with different methodologies. The data tracking is a nightmare. The
technology for the computers hasn’t caught up with it.”
Mazur noted, however, that the wheels are already in motion to address
the problems that the grand jury’s report discusses.
About $1.2 million in funding is included in the pending state budget for
high-tech improvements to the county’s water-testing lab.
More than $300,000 in county funding will be used to hire a
microbiologist and a lab technician, and to acquire equipment to help
grapple with the data avalanche, said Douglas Moore, laboratory director
for the Public Health Lab.
Nancy Gardner, president of the Newport Beach chapter of The Surfrider
Foundation, said she felt boosting water-quality resources would be an
important follow-up to the passage of the stricter legislation.
“The beach postings have certainly raised awareness,” she said. “This is
the next step. Let’s start to really look at what we’re finding.”
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