New plan may mean a cleaner ocean

Paul Clinton and Danette Goulet

County sanitation district officials have announced they will begin

disinfecting treated sewage that is released into the waters off

Huntington Beach, waste that environmentalists have implicated as the

cause of beach closings and illnesses among surfers and swimmers.

The announcement came at a news conference last week at the Orange

County Sanitation District’s Fountain Valley plant.

District leaders said they would spend $5 million per year to bleach

the waste water, which is sent into the water through a pipe on the ocean

floor. It is a process that would remove viruses and bacteria,

spokeswoman Lisa Murphy said.

“This removes us from the equation,” Murphy said. “It will remove us

from the doubt about us impacting the beach.”

The district has also spent about $5.1 million to implement an

extensive testing program to pinpoint the location of a massive plume of

pollution off the shorelines of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach.

City officials and environmentalists have long suspected it is causing

some of the beach warnings.

“If you kill live bacteria, any time you do that, its a pretty good

idea,” said City Councilman Ralph Bauer. “We do it in swimming pools all

the time and it keeps people from getting sick.”

But Bauer worries that bleaching the water may not be enough.

“They’re the experts, but I’d hope they’d take any precautions

necessary,” Bauer said. “I believe they need to take care of the chloride

and the outfall still has to stand muster to the clean water act.”

The sanitation district currently holds a waiver that allows it to

discharge sewage into the ocean that does not meet the standards laid out

in the Clean Water Act of 1972.

The district pumps 243-million gallons of partially treated sewage

into the Pacific Ocean each day through the pipe on the ocean floor. The

pipe opening is five miles out to sea.

District officials will begin the disinfection process within the next

90 days, Murphy said. The bleach is about three times stronger than the

household variety. Most of the $5 million for the project is the cost of

buying the industrial-strength chemical.

While environmentalists say they are glad to see proactive measures,

the bleach itself is a concern.

“I’m glad to see the district admit they have a problem, which in a

way goes into the waiver issue,” said Garry Brown, executive director of

Orange County CoastKeeper.

“We’re extremely concerned as to the volume of bleach they are putting

in and its effects,” he added. “We agree that we would support any

measures that are going to take bacteria out to make safe for swimmers,

but are concerned with the other possible effects.”

Any long-term plans to chlorinate would also have to include a

dechlorination process, Brown added.