Beach merchants divided on closure study

Eron Ben-Yehuda

HUNTINGTON BEACH -- Beach concessionaires are split about whether

officials who investigated last summer’s ocean contamination could have

reduced the time the shores were closed off, despite a recent report

suggesting critical tests should have been performed sooner.

The findings, made by a panel of experts at a meeting in Newport Beach

last week, prove that officials dropped the ball by waiting more than two

months during the peak tourist season before recommending swimmers

return, said Mike Ali, owner of Zack’s Pier Plaza and two other beach

stands.

“They took their sweet time,” he said.

But that attitude is nothing more than Monday morning quarterbacking,

said Jack Clapp, owner of Dwight’s concession stand.

“That’s easy for them to say now,” he said. “Everybody was trying to do

the best they could.”

The panel of oceanographers, microbiologists and hydrologists concluded

that officials should have tested earlier whether the high bacteria

levels were due to animal or human waste, said Phyllis Grifman, who runs

USC’s Sea Grant Program, which sponsored the event.

By assuming the cause of contamination was human waste, they spent too

much time searching for sewage leaks, ignoring urban runoff, she said.

Zeroing in on runoff from the start would have led officials to the

Talbert Marsh, which collects some of the untreated waste water that

flows from streets and lawns before spilling out into the ocean, she

said. A recent study, performed by UCI, showed the marsh might be largely

responsible for the pollution problem.

But during the summer, when bacteria levels soared as much as 10 times

above normal, “nobody looked at the marsh,” she said.

One of the officials in charge of monitoring the beach during that period

agreed that more could have been done sooner. Ever since the runoff was

diverted into treatment plants, the levels of bacteria have not come

close to their peak levels, said Larry Honeybourne, chief of the Orange

County Health Care Agency’s water-quality section.

But Honeybourne points out that the precise cause of the contamination

remains a mystery even now.

“I’m still scratching my head,” he said. “So are a lot of people.”