Pumping up the beaches

Danette Goulet

Every day trash and debris is carelessly dropped onto streets and into

gutters in Huntington Beach.

Signs of it are everywhere. Sediment from road construction washes

down into the storm drains and all of it washes out onto the beaches.

For years there has been a push to stop littering through

public-awareness campaigns and steep fines. And yet, the trash continues

to flow through the storm drains and out to the beaches and ocean.

But the trashing of Surf City beaches is about to stop.

The city’s public works department is in the process of acquiring

devices that will strain the trash and debris out of runoff before it

flushes out to the city beaches.

These devices, called gross pollutant separators, will be placed

underground and will interrupt the flow from the 12 storm drain lines

that lead to beaches in Downtown Huntington Beach. They will capture the

trash and sediment and collect it in a sump basket. From there, the storm

water, now free of trash, will flow on through the drains minus the

trash, debris, vegetation and coarse sediment.

The $2-million project, funded by Proposition 13, will clean storm

water from First Street all the way down to Goldenwest Street, said Todd

Broussard, an engineer with the public works department.

“This will catch trash down to the size of a cigarette butt,” he said.

Broussard warns that this is no cure-all. The contraptions do not

capture any bacteria or viruses that may be in the runoff but only pick

up the solids. It will, however, pick up solids as small as two

millimeters -- the size of a match head, said Tim Joyce, a senior

engineer with CDS Technologies, the company that makes the units

Huntington Beach is looking to buy.

These Continuous Deflective Separation, or CDS units, have cylindrical

stainless steel screens through which the storm water is diverted.

“The water as it goes through that screen will be a swirling vortex

that keeps the screen from blocking,” Joyce explained. “Usually if you

have a screen it tends to get blocked. This will have a washing velocity,

also it helps with settling finer particles.”

Downtown Huntington Beach has 12 storm drain outlets along the city

beaches between 1st and Goldenwest streets. A gross pollutant separator,

likely a CDS unit, will be installed before each of these outlets,

although a couple storm drains may converge to share a unit, Broussard

said. Each unit will cost anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000. The whole

project has been budgeted at $2 million.

The funds are part of the $4 million Huntington Beach received from

Proposition 13 in March 2000 for water-quality improvements.

Proposition 13, the Safe Drinking Water, Clean Water, Watershed

Protection and Flood Protection Act, focused on a variety of water

management and environmental enhancement programs throughout California.

The initiative supports safe drinking water quality, flood protection and

water reliability projects throughout the state.

Once the units are purchased, the city will put the installation

project out to bid. City leaders hope to begin installation in the fall

after the tourist season is over, Broussard said.

It will take about two weeks to install each unit, but several may be

installed simultaneously, he added.

The city of Laguna Beach installed two units last year and have five

more under design bid currently.

“It collects a lot of debris -- there are a lot of things in storm

water,” said Derek Wieske, an assistant city engineer in Laguna Beach.

Each week the units are visually inspected, Wieske added, and emptied

when needed, which is usually about once a month.

The units in Laguna are four foot in diameter and three feet deep,

Joyce said, the sump chamber, which holds the solids would contain

anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 pounds when emptied, depending on whether it

contains heavy sediment or lighter vegetation.

The units that Huntington Beach is looking to put in are three to five

times larger than those in Laguna.

“They’re basically the only units that can handle the flow we have in

the rainy season,” said Broussard, who added that he’s seen the beaches

before crews have gone out to clean them up -- strewn with Styrofoam

cups, branches, leaves, you name it.

“[The CDS units] are going to remove the trash prior to it ending up

on the beaches,” he said. “What we’re looking for is water quality, at

high flows it will reach the ocean, but also keeping the beaches clean

not just a water quality -- so it’s a dual purpose.”

* DANETTE GOULET is the city editor. She can be reached at (714)

965-7170 or by e-mail at o7 danette.goulet@latimes.comf7 .