Talbert water among worst

Alicia Robinson

A Surf City water body is near the top of a list of Orange County

waters with poor water quality, according to a report released by

Orange County CoastKeeper and other coastal monitoring groups.

The report is based on data collected May 17, a statewide

water-monitoring day for various water-quality organizations. The

Talbert Channel showed high levels of phosphates and nitrates, which

can cause explosive plant growth and kill fish, CoastKeeper project

coordinator Ray Hiemstra said.

The waterway is one of the four worst sites monitored in Orange

County, Hiemstra said. The other three top offenders were Los Trancos

Creek in Newport Beach, Aliso Creek in Laguna Beach and Segunda

Deshecha in San Clemente.

Of the 36 sites checked countywide, water at 31 sites exceeded at

least one of the standards measured. Federal Environmental Protection

Agency standards were used in the monitoring, Hiemstra said.

“Pretty much every stream that we monitored had some kind of

problem,” he said. “Some of them were just more serious than others.”

Compared with an EPA-designated “acceptable” level of 0.1

milligrams of phosphates per liter of water, Talbert water contained

0.18 milligrams per liter.

The high levels of nitrates and phosphates are “your classic urban

runoff problems” caused by lawn fertilizers, people washing their

cars and the like, Hiemstra said.

The Santa Ana River Water Quality Control Board oversees numerous

bodies of water in the Orange County, including the Talbert Marsh.

Water-quality board spokesman Kurt Berchtold said he had not seen the

report yet, but the board has worked with Orange County CoastKeeper

to solve water-quality problems.

Orange County is already familiar with beach closures and

pollution of coastal waters, he said.

“There have been significant problems in the past, and in recent

years, I think, those problems have been improving, but certainly

they’re not completely eliminated,” Berchtold said.

The first step to fixing a water-quality problem is identifying

the source of pollution, he said. If urban runoff is causing

pollution, municipalities bear some responsibility, and the board can

require them to take corrective action.

“We will certainly review the report and look for any problems

that it identifies that we can address using our regulatory

authority,” Berchtold said.

Poor water-quality ratings in the water bodies did not come as a

surprise.

“We’ve looked at it many, many times,” Huntington Beach

Councilwoman Debbie Cook said of the Talbert Marsh water problem.

“Its been studied to death, and we’ve done everything we can to try

to clean up what’s coming out of there.”

The city diverted flow from Talbert Channel to the Orange County

Sanitation District, but even that hasn’t solved the problem

entirely, she said.

“It continues to be a problem and nobody’s come up with any

alternatives for what to do with it. ... We’re open to suggestions.”

Hiemstra said that about half of the 546 sites monitored statewide

showed some water-quality problems. The report will help establish

benchmark data for water quality along the California coast, he said.

“A lot of these waterways, as far as I know, have never been

tested for this,” he said. “It’s intended specifically to identify

problems that maybe nobody even knew about.”

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment

for Times Community News. She can be reached at (949) 764-4330 or by

e-mail at alicia.robinson@latimes.com.