H.B. scores well on waters

Conservationist group Heal the Bay has released its annual Beach Report Card on coastal water quality throughout the state, and experts say this year’s drought may have eased bacteria levels statewide.

Like Orange County in general, Huntington Beach scored well, although experts said there were no easy solutions for the few trouble spots.

No Huntington Beach sites ended up on the report’s “Beach Bummers” list of the 10 worst beaches in California, seven of which were in Los Angeles County. Beaches along the city’s coast had mostly good scores, with nearly straight A’s during dry months and only small dips during wet periods.

Better grades mean swimmers are less likely to suffer stomach flu or other illness after swimming or surfing in the waters, according to the group’s report. It is likely that this year’s drought eased scores, especially in wet periods, the report said.

But Huntington State Beach at Brookhurst Avenue was a glaring exception to the rule, getting C’s across the board.

Huntington State Beach is better than it was nearly a decade ago when bacteria levels closed the beach for months at a time, said Monica Mazur, supervisor for the county Health Care Agency’s ocean water protection program.

But despite many new precautions against runoff, bacteria levels are still high, and it’s hard to pin down the reason.

“You have the Santa Ana River, Talbert Marsh, you have the AES power plant, the Orange County Sanitation District [sewage treatment plant], onshore currents, offshore currents,” she said. “It’s so many different factors. You have all that stuff working in there, you can’t just turn one of them off and see what happens.”

Scientists are still looking into the problem, and theories range from any or all of those factors to the possibility that the “indicator” bacteria measured are growing on their own in wet sand even if pollution is low.

The area stood in contrast to Huntington Harbour, which appeared to have a split personality: excellent scores in dry and summer periods, some even getting a rare A+ grade, while some sites had failing or near-failing marks on wet days.

That’s possibly just the fault of geography, Mazur said. The area is too enclosed to let runoff get carried out to sea, and instead leaves it concentrated in one spot after a rainstorm.

“Huntington Harbour probably matches Newport Bay,” she said. “You have enclosed harbors and a lot of runoff, and very limited flushing.”

The full report is available at www.healthebay.org.

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