Quiet summer season ends

Alicia Robinson

Beach closures due to a sewage spill and big swells caused by

Hurricane Howard brought to an end Monday what lifeguards said was an

overall quiet summer.

Beaches from 52nd Street in Newport Beach to Magnolia Street in

Huntington Beach were closed Saturday evening after a power failure

caused 13,000 gallons of treated wastewater to spill from a

Huntington Beach pump station that afternoon. By 11 a.m. Monday,

clean results from bacteria tests allowed officials to reopen the

water between 52nd and Orange streets, leaving only 1,000 feet of the

beach in Newport closed.

An interruption in the pump station’s electrical power and a

subsequent problem with two backup generators caused the wastewater

to back up and spill into the ocean, but the spilled water had been

treated and did not contain any raw sewage, Orange County Sanitation

District spokeswoman Jennifer Cabral said.

Officials suspected the power outage was the result of

firefighters hitting power lines with a water drop that was aimed at

a brush fire at Talbert Nature Preserve Saturday, but the cause of

the outage had not been confirmed, Cabral said.

At the beach Monday afternoon, the water was bracing and the

temperature was around 75 degrees, milder than the three-digit heat

levels inland, but the sand and surf in Newport were busy.

The swell was a bit smaller than Sunday’s waves, but that meant

strong rip currents kept lifeguards on the alert, Newport Beach

Lifeguard Dispatcher Eric Sherwin said.

Lifeguards made 502 rescues on Sunday and 250 on Monday. By the

end of the year they are likely to have assisted the 8 million

visitors to the city’s beaches with more than 3,500 rescues,

lifeguard Capt. Jim Turner said.

While lifeguards kept watch over the water, some beachgoers

preferred to just soak up the sun. Bob and Nancy Lewis had already

been in the water and were relaxing on beach chairs.

“We just live in Costa Mesa, so we come down here whenever we can

during the summer,” Nancy Lewis said.

In the face of holiday traffic and crowds, one enticement for the

couple to hit the beach was that Nancy Lewis’ sister has a house

overlooking the Newport sands.

Also, she said, “the hundred-degree weather had something to do

with it.”

Monday wasn’t a day of leisure for everyone. Betty Berkshire of

Newport Beach tried to get passersby to stop and register to vote or

get information and bumper stickers supporting Democratic

Presidential candidate John Kerry.

Local Democrats have set up a table near the Newport Pier on

Saturdays for the last month and have done “a pretty good business,”

Berkshire said.

However, Monday brought a different crowd.

“I think a lot more people are on holiday, and they really don’t

want to think about it,” she said.

The Labor Day holiday marked the summer’s official end for Drew

McCrary, 22, of Costa Mesa. Monday was his last day as a lifeguard, a

job he’s had for six summers.

“It’s cool that we have such a good surf this weekend,” McCrary

said. “After this, the crowds are going to die down. This is like our

last big day.”

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

She may be reached at (949) 764-4330 or by e-mail at

alicia.robinson@latimes.com.