Sewage

This letter is in regard to the attempt of the City of Escondido and the County of San Diego to lower the way they treat the 13 million to 15 million gallons of sewage whose outfall is off Cardiff State Beach. We are retired. Although we don't use the ocean as much as we used to, we do enjoy walking on the beach and being part of this beach community. When we found out that the proposed treatment (advanced primary) doesn't rid the sewage of the virus and bacteria (as secondary does)

An environmental crusader known as "Mr. Malibu" has apologized to Pepperdine University and retracted accusations that the school is to blame for effluent flowing down Marie Canyon Creek and into the Pacific Ocean. In exchange, the university has agreed to drop a lawsuit against activist Cary ONeal that alleged libel and "invasion of privacy by placing person in a false light in public eye. " In two videos he posted online, ONeal claimed that a foamy substance pooling on a Malibu beach was sewage released by Pepperdine.

For years, regulatory agencies and the courts have prodded the city of Los Angeles toward full secondary treatment of the sewage it dumps into Santa Monica Bay. As a result, the city has a massive sewage disposal modernization program under way and will achieve full secondary treatment of its effluent by 1998. Now, the County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County are fighting the same losing battle that the city waged for so long. The districts have been seeking from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a waiver--the sort the city has worked under--to exempt about half its effluent from the secondary treatment level required by the Clean Water Act. The county districts have used a two-pronged argument in seeking partial exemption from the federal law. They claim that it would be more effective to work for source reduction--to get industry and other sewage customers to keep toxic metals and other harmful effluent material from getting into the sewage system in the first place.

Will somebody come clean about those soap-like bubbles in Malibu's tiny Marie Canyon Creek? A legal battle between an environmental crusader and Pepperdine University is raising questions about a frothy cascade of storm water that periodically spills over a beach lined with celebrity homes and into the Pacific Ocean. Videographer Cary ONeal, who blogs as "Mr. Malibu," insists that the runoff is tainted by a sewage treatment plant that serves the university and a housing tract next door, and that the school should be held to task for it. Pepperdine officials dispute that and have gone to court to prevent ONeal's accusation and home-made videos of the sudsy flow from going viral.

Some inland beaches in Long Beach will be closed until at least this evening following the accidental discharge of untreated sewage into the Los Cerritos channel Saturday. Long Beach Fire Department spokesman Paul Rodriguez said the city would reopen the beaches after it was determined that bacteria levels in the water were safe.

After reading (Jan. 13) about how the Environmental Protection Agency is in cahoots with the Justice Department, the City of Los Angeles, and state water officials in allowing continued sewage dumping in Santa Monica Bay, I joined the Sierra Club. Now I'd like to propose a more fitting name for the Environmental Protection Agency: the BMPA--Big Money Protection Agency. KAREN SANDERS Santa Monica

A jury found Amtrak guilty Thursday of dumping raw sewage into Florida waterways in the national rail passenger line's first such criminal trial. The state filed charges of commercial littering after Amtrak refused to stop dumping raw human wastes from moving trains onto the tracks and into the St. Johns River and Rice Creek. Amtrak contended that federal law exempts it from state pollution control laws.

A sewage spill into Newport Bay closed the water at Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club Marina in Newport Beach to swimming and diving until further notice, county health officials said Monday. The spill was the result of a blocked sewage pipe at a Fashion Island restaurant.

People who want a clean ocean and beaches in Orange County should note that their sewage is being dumped into the ocean via a 301(h) waiver that allows the Orange County Sanitation District to discharge only partially treated sewage into the ocean. According to the federal Clean Water Act, all sewage should receive secondary treatment that removes most of the solids, bacteria and viruses from what gets flushed down the toilet. The waiver, however, permits the Sanitation District to only treat half of the sewage to this level.

Members of five households are expected to return home today after city workers finish removing the raw sewage that inundated their homes last weekend. Julie Gutierrez, director of the Department of Public Works, said the residents were evacuated and placed in hotels after the sewer line backed up. The single-family house and four-unit complex are near Hill Avenue and Howard Street.

Opponents malign it as "toilet to tap. " But a new National Research Council report says that reclaimed water can contribute a growing portion of the nation's drinking water supplies and be as safe as conventional sources. The assessment is especially relevant to Southern California, which has been a pioneer in recharging local aquifers with treated wastewater but still sends most of its runoff and treated water to the Pacific Ocean. A decade ago, public outcry and electoral politics thwarted a Los Angeles plan to partially replenish San Fernando Valley groundwater with recycled supplies.

Here's a posting from the "ick" files. Scientsts are now delving into an uncharted environment to study human and other viruses: raw sewage. In a study published Tuesday in the online journal mBio, researchers from the U.S. and Spainfound that untreated human wastewater -- "the effluence of society," they wrote -- contains an incredible diversity of viruses ... and that the vast majority are viruses we hadn't known of before. Click for the abstract . At this point, biologists know of about 3,000 different viruses, representing 84 different viral families -- but they suspect that those known bugs are just the tip of the iceberg.

The lights may be on in San Diego, but now some of its most popular beaches are closed through the weekend. Thursday's massive power outage led to a spill of an estimated 1.9 million gallons of sewage into the Los Penaquitos Lagoon, authorities said, prompting the closure of beaches from Scripps Pier (in the La Jolla Shores area) north, including the popular swimming and surfing areas of Black's Beach in La Jolla, Del Mar and Solana Beach. From Cardiff north to Encinitas and beyond, beaches remain open.

A federal judge found probable cause Tuesday to extradite a former producer of the "Survivor" TV show to Mexico to face charges that he killed his wife at a Cancun resort and dumped her body in a sewage tank. A shackled Bruce Beresford-Redman, 41, showed little emotion as U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian announced the finding. "Based on the totality of the circumstances," there is probable cause to find that the producer "committed the aggravated homicide of Monica Beresford-Redman," Chooljian said.

Last week's rainstorms offered stark illustrations of the destructive power of a strong downpour: Homes besieged by mud, flooded roadways and beaches littered with washed-up garbage. But a less visible blight also took a toll on the Southern California coastline. As dirty storm runoff rushed seaward during the rains, it overwhelmed some of the region's sewage systems, rupturing sewer mains, disabling pump stations and surging above manhole covers in a series of spills that swept hundreds of thousands of gallons of waste into the ocean.

As federal investigators examine last month's deadly natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, engineering experts already have a strong sense of what went wrong and say the evidence calls into question widely used industry estimates of pipeline safety. A 28-foot segment of ruptured pipe shows signs that its steel had become brittle over the decades. The blast point also occurred at a dip in the landscape that left the underground pipe subject to corrosion from accumulating water and sewage.

Despite the release of 6.2 million gallons of treated sewage into the ocean a mile from shore, beachgoers--more than 75,000 strong--came to Los Angeles County beaches and were allowed to go into the water Saturday after preliminary test results showed that the water was safe. The sewage diversion, which occurred Friday, was blamed on electrical failures and a lightning strike that disabled pumps at the 30-year-old Hyperion sewage treatment plant.

A worker at the Hyperion sewage treatment plant near Playa del Rey accidentally opened the wrong valve Thursday and sent 10,000 gallons of "over-chlorinated, fully treated, secondary" sewage toward ocean waters a mile off Dockweiler State Beach, Los Angeles City officials said. Del Biagi, director of the city's Bureau of Sanitation, said the accidental discharge posed no danger to swimmers although the over-chlorinated effluent could affect fish and other marine life.

Health officials Friday afternoon reopened beaches near Ballona Creek to swimmers and surfers, two days after they were closed because of a major sewage spill. Testing showed bacteria levels in the water within normal ranges for two days in a row, so lifeguards on Friday began removing closure signs from two miles of coastline south of the creek outlet, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. The closures were ordered after a clog in a sewer main caused a manhole near Centinela Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard to overflow Wednesday, discharging an estimated 500,000 gallons of raw sewage into a storm drain that leads to Ballona Creek and, eventually, the Pacific Ocean.

A major sewage spill that has closed a two-mile stretch of beach near Marina del Rey released about 500,000 gallons of raw sewage into a storm drain that runs to Ballona Creek and eventually spills into the ocean, authorities said. The spill ranks among the worst in the last two years along the Los Angeles County coastline. The beach will probably remain closed for three days. Residents reported a manhole overflowing with sewage near Centinela Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard about 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, said Ron Charles, spokesman for the Los Angeles Public Works Department.