Beaches Orange County

Orange County health officials closed 600 feet of shoreline because the water there may have been contaminated by raw sewage, authorities said Monday. The closure, 300 feet up the coast and down the coast from Bluebird Canyon Drive, marks the third time this year that an Orange County beach has been off limits to swimmers and surfers because of a sewage spill, said Monica Mazur, spokeswoman for the county Health Care Agency. Last year, sewage spills closed county beaches a record 40 times.

For a short time Tuesday morning, Huntington Beach lived up to its "Surf City" reputation with 14- to 15-foot waves, the biggest surf recorded there in at least four years, according to city officials. But don't grab your surfboards just yet, lifeguards warn. The same storm that gave rise to the huge waves also elevated ocean bacteria to levels high enough to issue a beach advisory along the entire 42 miles of Orange County coast.

Gov. Gray Davis announced $10 million in grants Wednesday to replenish eroding public beaches, including nearly $4.7 million for the Orange County coastline. The money will be used in two ways. Some will pay for immediate sand-replenishment projects to restore dwindling stretches of coast from San Francisco to San Diego. But much will be used to study natural replenishment processes, with the goal of decreasing constant, costly sand replacement projects.

Sewage spills Sunday and Monday caused the closure of about 1 1/4 miles of Orange County beach, including a stretch just north of Dana Point's luxurious Ritz-Carlton hotel. The first spill occurred at 12:15 p.m. Sunday when about 200 gallons of raw sewage overflowed from a Laguna Niguel sewer line blocked by concrete slurry and roots, said Larry Honeybourne, a spokesman for the Orange County Health Care Agency.

As he looks out from his trailer terrace toward the Pacific Ocean, Joe Bevacqua finds it hard to contemplate losing what he considers his little piece of paradise. The business executive has been out of work since January. He and his wife, Helen, live on a 1,500-square-foot double-wide with five of their eight children in the El Morro Mobile Home Park along Pacific Coast Highway.

A sewage spill has prompted the closure of about a mile of ocean off Laguna Beach at least through Wednesday, health officials said Monday. The ocean was declared closed to swimmers from Divers Cove south to Thalia Street after the 9 a.m. Monday spill from a sewer collection line near Milligan Drive and Laguna Canyon Road.

The Orange County Sanitation District will unveil plans today for a multimillion-dollar study to determine what caused the devastating beach closures in Huntington Beach during the summer of 1999. A number of agencies will spend about $4.1 million to conduct the study, which is scheduled to begin May 21. Results are expected in June 2002. Researchers will use water-quality data, near-shore sediment analysis, historical data and other information.

With the help of heavy equipment, workers Monday began installing two-ton concrete blocks across Talbert Channel in Huntington Beach as part of the county's $350,000 project to temporarily divert urban runoff into sewage treatment facilities. As many as 2.5 million gallons of runoff a day--one of the largest diversions in Southern California--are expected to be captured by blocking the flow with "enviro-blocks" that fit together like Legos.

Orange County's public health officer said Tuesday he is considering closing a stretch of Huntington Beach's shoreline this summer because treated sewage released four miles offshore may be drifting back toward the beach. In a separate move, the Orange County Sanitation District on Tuesday announced a $4.1-million project to determine whether the treated sewage from its outfall was the cause of the devastating closures of much of Huntington Beach's shoreline in the summer of 1999.

With the Bush administration considering a severe cut in spending on beach-erosion projects, county supervisors Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution calling for current federal funding levels to remain. Supervisors Jim Silva and Tom Wilson, who represent the county's 42-mile coastline, requested the action after hearing that the administration may reduce the federal share of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' projects from 65% to 35%.