County reopens ocean spill areas
Vik Jolly
Orange County Register
09/22/2010
Based on test results, Orange County health officials on Wednesday afternoon reopened stretches of ocean in Dana Point and Laguna Beach that had been closed because of raw sewage spills.
A quarter-mile stretch of ocean on either side of Salt Creek at Monarch and Salt Creek county beaches had been closed by a 1,500-gallon spill.
An addititional 475 gallons of raw sewage had shut down access to the water in the half-mile stretch between Point Place, where the county Thousand Steps Beach is located, and Vista del sol at Three Arch Bay in Laguna, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency.
The beach areas at both locations had remained open, and now swimming, surfing and diving restrictions have been lifted as of 3:15 p.m., an agency official said.
Marine safety organizations responsible for guarding those beaches have been asked to remove all signs warning the public about the sewage spill.
The closure in Laguna went into effect on Sunday and the Dana Point ocean water area was closed to the public on Monday.
The area affected in Laguna was largely in the gated community of Three Arch Bay and the coves that residents there use, but the county shut down the water portion at Thousand Steps Beach as a precaution, said Larry Honeybourne, program manager for the Health Care Agency.
In the Dana Point spill, a large Moulton Niguel Water District main broke on Sunday night inundating a sewage line adjacent to it, Honeybourne said. The pump at the sewage collection system could not keep up, causing raw sewage to overflow into the storm drain, which leads to the Pacific.
In Laguna, the spill was caused when a South Coast Water District sewage collection line overflowed on Saturday afternoon, sending raw sewage from an overflowing manhole to the nearest storm drain and to the ocean at Three Arch Bay, Honeybourne said.
