ON THE WATER -- Really nasty waves

June Casagrande

It’s the ultimate tease: The surf’s raging, but so are levels of some

really nasty stuff that can make surfers sick.

The same storms that leave the air feeling fresh and scrubbed clean,

the same storms that whip up the waves that dreams are made of, are also

the storms that send things like animal waste, sewage, rotting plant

debris and dripped motor oil into the ocean and bay.

“It’s just a general rule: Any time there’s a storm of this magnitude,

we put out an advisory. We recommend staying out of the water for at

least 72 hours after the last storm,” said Monica Mazur, an

environmental health specialist for the Orange County Health Care Agency.

This is no play-it-safe overreaction, she said.

“Testing has shown that pretty much any time there’s a storm of this

magnitude, levels of things like fecal coliform are going to be too high

to go in the water,” she said.

But what about the invincible die-hard, the least-health-conscious of

surfers? Where should such a wave warrior go for the best odds against

icky infections and other consequences? Don’t ask health officials. Their

answer remains a solid, beach-to-beach “stay out.”

And there is one place you really, really don’t want to take a chance.

Unlike all the other storm drains that carry stuff into the bay and

ocean, the Santa Ana River outfall has a unique twist upstream that makes

it all the more risky.

The river, which dumps into the ocean about four miles offshore from

the city’s border with Huntington Beach, has a dam in Riverside County.

The Prado Dam adds an element of uncertainty because there’s no way to be

sure how long water there was held before it was released to trickle down

to Newport Beach. Sometimes, four or five days after a rain, dam waters

could be released, sending some unpleasant surprises into the ocean.

Soon, beach goers will have access to a little more information. The

Orange County Health Care Agency will begin posting beach-to-beach

bacteria counts on its Web site at o7 www.oceanbeachinfo.comf7 shortly

after the first of the year. But, because it will contain information

from tests a week earlier or more, the defiant surfer looking for

direction for the day’s cleanest waves won’t get much help here, either.