Huntington’s beaches earn a clean grade, UCI study says

Paul Clinton

Surf City has an image problem.

Huntington Beach’s shoreline, which has taken its lumps in the

media for a rash of bacteria outbreaks, is cleaner than it has ever

been, a UC Irvine study concludes.

“I think there’s a positive environmental message here,” said

Stanley Grant, the report’s lead author. “There’s been a lot of money

spent over the years on mitigation, and we can clearly see the

impacts of that.”

In the report, published Wednesday on the Web site of the American

Chemical Society’s journal, Grant surveyed water-quality data from

1958 to 2001. The Orange County Sanitation District and Orange County

Health Care Agency provided the data.

One of his findings in the report was that water quality improved

dramatically after the sanitation district replaced its outfall pipe

in 1971. The district releases 234 million gallons of sewage per day

from a pipe 4 1/2 miles out to sea.

Before 1971, the district released its sewage only a mile

offshore.

Grant, who chairs the school’s Department of Chemical Engineering

and Materials Science, also questioned the validity of current

water-quality testing methods.

When county health regulators warn swimmers away from Huntington

State Beach, they’re using data that’s almost 24 hours old, leaving

open the possibility that the bacteria levels have already returned

to more appropriate levels, Grant said.

The beach, Grant said, could already be clean when the sign is

poked into the sand.

“You’d have to have a stop light up on the beach flashing green

and red,” Grant said. “It flashes red, and everybody would have to

run out of the surf. It flashes green, and everybody could run back

in.”

The county’s regulators applauded the analysis as food for

thought.

Larry Honeybourne, a spokesman for the Health Care Agency’s

environmental health division, said Grant’s study presented the data

in a unique way.

The report also pointed to a series of unexplained “hot spots” for

bacteria outbreaks at the city’s state beaches.

“Huntington State Beach is an area that we have had intermittent

postings,” Honeybourne said. “It is a location that tends to have

higher bacteria counts.”