The Natural Perspective

Vic Leipzig and Lou Murray

As the great bacterial beach closure of 1999 is winding down, it’s time

to look for lessons to be learned from our two-month ordeal.

One certainly is that we don’t know nearly as much as we thought about

our environment and how we are affecting it. Because we routinely

monitored ocean water only for some bacteria in the past, it came as a

great surprise to find that society dumps other kinds of harmful bacteria

into the sea. And when we look closely, we’ll see that viruses are also a

part of our urban effluent. Bottom line: we need routine monitoring for

the widest possible array of harmful bacterial and viral species.

Another lesson to be learned from the beach closure is that even though

the problem this time apparently was not a sewage leak, we still need to

pay attention to the terrible deficiencies in our sewer system. Some of

the sewers in Huntington Beach, especially in the Downtown area, are

completely eroded and others are not far from total failure. Bottom line:

we need to accept the recommendations of the city’s Infrastructure

Committee and invest some big bucks in sewer lines.

A third lesson is that we need to better manage our storm drain system.

Everyone assumed at the outset of the crisis that the culprit was leaking

sewage. That was the problem a year ago, for example, at Bolsa Chica

State Beach. This time people were surprised to discover that, instead,

the problem was in the storm drains. Unfortunately, large numbers of

people still don’t know that there is a separate system for storm runoff

as opposed to sewage. In fact, most beach closures in Orange County are

due to contaminated storm runoff rather than leaking sewage. Closures

usually occur in the winter following major storms. This time the culprit

was people sprinkling their lawns, hosing their sidewalks and washing

their cars, activities which can wash dog and cat feces into the storm

drains. This kind of low flow accumulates in underground sumps and

festers for several days before it is pumped to the channels that lead to

the ocean. Bottom line: we need to pump those sumps out regularly to

prevent bacterial build up.

A fourth has to do with our coastal wetlands. Wetlands like Bolsa Chica

and the Talbert Marsh are not the source of the problem. In fact, they

can remove some of the pollutants from the water that flows through them.

In the city of Arcata, Calif., a constructed marsh serves as part of that

city’s sewage treatment facility. Our local marshes receive storm flow on

its way to the sea and actually reduce the bacterial content of the water

before it flows into the ocean. However, our fragmented remnant marshes

can’t clean up all the pollution that is dumped into them. In fact, they

deserve the cleanest water we can give them to keep them healthy. Bottom

line: we need to protect our wetlands to help them perform their natural

functions.

Vic Leipzig and Lou Murray are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].