Closed beach will open today

Lauren Vane

Orange County Environmental Health officials closed about 1,000 feet

of shoreline in Laguna Beach on Monday after a South Coast Water

District crew reported a sewage spill that it suspected had traveled

down the storm drain and onto the beach, officials said.

At 11:45 a.m., a crew performing routine maintenance on a nearby

sewer lift station noticed sewage coming out of a manhole near South

Coast Highway at Circle Drive. The district brought in emergency

crews, that took off the manhole cover and dislodged a foreign object

that had been blocking the sewage from flowing properly.

“One of the good things about having crews that are out and about

all the time doing daily maintenance is that they’re the eyes for the

district,� said district spokesperson Linda Homscheid.

The blockage was removed at 12:25 p.m., after 1,400 gallons of sewage had gone through the storm drain at 1,000 Steps Beach.

The district notified Environmental Health, who then closed the

1000-foot surf zone from Seacliff Drive to 1,000 Steps County Beach.

“Once we know that sewage has hit the water, we’re bound by state

law to do a closure,� said Monica Mazur, a supervising environmental

health specialist at Orange County Environmental Health.

There are significant health risks when sewage spills onto a beach

and people come in contact with contaminated water, Mazur said.

Although sewage spill sites are typically tested before they are

allowed to re-open, Orange County Health said they will not test at

this spill due to the recent and continuing rainstorms that confuse

the testing process, Mazur said. According to Mazur, the closure

signs will likely be removed today.

“Historically, pretty much after 72 hours everything’s been

diluted out,� Mazur said.

South Coast Water District has not been able to identify the

object that blocked the sewage and led to the spill because the

object was destroyed in the process of clearing the system, Homscheid

said.

The district plans to inspect the sewer with a microscopic camera

in hopes of finding more information about what caused the blockage,

Homscheid said.

“It was a foreign object, it’s not something that’s ordinarily in

the sewer,� Homscheid said.

The two most common causes of sewage spills are tree roots

invading the sewer lines and grease sticking to the inside of sewer

lines, Homscheid said.

According to Mazur, this is the second sewage spill of the new

year, and last year in Orange County there were a total of 30 sewage

spills. The most recent spill at 1,000 steps is comparatively small

to other spills that have occurred in the past, Mazur said.