Experiment at Lagoon Uncovers Sewage Spill

An experiment that opened Carlsbad’s Batiquitos Lagoon to the ocean accidentally uncovered an ongoing sewage leak that spewed 48,000 gallons a day of raw effluent into the sensitive wildlife habitat before it was repaired this week.

Leucadia County Water District officials say there is no way to tell how many days--or even weeks--that the sewage spewed undetected through a crushed segment of a six-inch sewer pipe where it crosses San Marcos Creek near El Camino Real.

District workers on Tuesday spotted a caved-in portion of the creek bank and “could smell something” after the stream’s water level dropped in response to a test opening of the lagoon to the ocean, district manager Joan Geiselhart said.

Geiselhart noted that water district meters did not warn of a drop in the flow of the effluent.

“They’re designed to detect any increase or decrease in the flow,” she said. “I think it (was) just not enough of a total flow” to be detected. The leak may have gone undetected for “a matter of weeks,” she said.

The break was repaired about 6 p.m. Thursday after diking a section of the stream and pumping it dry. Two 5,000-gallon pump trucks were used to haul the effluent away on Wednesday and Thursday while the line was being repaired.

Last Friday, marine engineers had opened the mouth of the stagnating lagoon as part of preliminary tests for a $20 million enhancement program to provide for continual “tidal flushing” of the inlet.

At a Thursday night discussion of the project, the air crackled during a confrontation between conservationists and officials from the Port of Los Angeles, which is financing the project.

The port selected the 496-acre body of water in 1985 to serve as the quid pro quo for the marine habitat that would be destroyed by its plans to build landfills at the end of a Los Angeles-to-Texas pipeline.

State conservation law mandates that specific restoration projects be provided by private parties who propose removing wetland habitats as part of their projects. The port was forced to pick Batiquitos Lagoon because there is little available land around Los Angeles Harbor the same size as the planned 450-acre landfills.

At the Thursday meeting, there was discussion of the problems that engineers must overcome in dredging and opening the inlet. Then sparks flew as members of the nonprofit Batiquitos Lagoon Foundation challenged a port official on what they perceived as a basic conflict of interest in the enhancement project.

Currently, the shallow lagoon has virtually no marine habitats, though it is home to a diverse and thriving culture of birds and waterfowl, ornithologists have said.

Enhancement Project

“Since it is a lagoon enhancement project, habitat values should be driving the engineering rather than the engineering driving the habitat values,” said Karen Messer, a member of the lagoon foundation and the Buena chapter of the Audubon Society.

Vern Hall, the port’s project manager, said that the plan would “in no way diminish the values of other (waterfowl) habitats” while creating new habitats for marine life. Under pressure from Messer, Hall acknowledged that the port was under an obligation to create more habitats to mitigate the marine life being displaced in the two landfills planned for Los Angeles Harbor.

If that is not possible, Hall said: “We have no interest in Batiquitos Lagoon.”