Year’s Worst Leak Fouls Bay

Orange County’s biggest sewage spill of the year--nearly 270,000 gallons of barely treated waste--spilled into Newport Bay this week, marking the record-breaking 38th time in 2000 that contamination put local waters off-limits, health officials said Friday.

The spill, reported Thursday night, has closed a portion of the bay above Northstar Beach to swimmers and divers, said Monica Mazur, spokeswoman for the county’s Health Care Agency. Pollution has kept most of the upper bay closed since 1974.

About 5 p.m. Thursday, an Irvine Ranch Water District employee noticed bubbling, muddy water in San Diego Creek. District workers investigated, and discovered an aging, broken pipe, said Wayne Posey, director of waste water operations at the water district. The 1940s-era line may have been used to send creek water to hunters’ duck ponds.

“We have no record of that pipe in any of our maps,” said district spokeswoman Joyce Wegner-Gwidt.

Uncertain where the pipe came from, workers used an electric current that allowed them to follow it with a monitor without digging. They traced it to beneath one of the district’s emergency holding basins. The 8.5-million gallon basin is filled with partially treated waste water containing high levels of harmful bacteria. It was being used to hold waste while workers fixed a broken pipe elsewhere, Posey said.

The basin, which had not been used in six years, was filled Wednesday, Posey said. Workers stood neck-deep in the waste water until 3 a.m. Friday, digging a trench between the basin and the creek to find the leak, then plugged the pipe.

The earth and clay basin was being drained Friday. When it empties, workers will try to determine how the pipe broke.

About three weeks ago, water district contractors dredged the area with heavy equipment, which could have nicked the pipe, said Mazur.

Posey did not discount the theory, but said any activity near the pipe in the last six years is also a potential cause and needs to be investigated.

The water near Newport Aquatic Center, which rents kayaks and canoes, was still open to boating.

Employee Alicia Cole, 23, said the spill hasn’t affected business much because of the weather and time of year.

“It has amazed me . . . how many times we get calls saying there was a spill, or how many times they put signs up,” said Cole, who has worked there eight months.

The incident was the eighth closure of part of the bay this year.

Contact with the water could cause gastrointestinal, upper respiratory, eye, ear, nose or throat infections, health officials said. Children, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems are especially susceptible to pathogens found in human waste.