Tests Show Huntington Beach’s Seaside Bathrooms Didn’t Shut Down the Shore

Beach bathrooms are not the cause of high bacteria counts that forced county health officials to close nearly a half-mile stretch of Huntington State Beach this week, leaving officials with a mystery disturbingly reminiscent of the devastating 1999 beach closure.

That closure, which put miles of beach in the city off-limits for two months during the height of the tourist season, also started with mysterious spikes in bacteria levels.

The cause has never been determined.

Testing on Thursday and Friday ruled out three public bathrooms on the beach near Magnolia Street as sources, officials said.

“All preliminary information is that we do not have any leaking sewer lines at any of the three locations,” said Don Ito, the state parks superintendent in Orange County.

Investigators still need on Monday to check two short lines that hook into the sanitation district’s sewer system, he said.

Regional water officials might ask for more ocean monitoring to determine whether a sewage plume released more than four miles offshore is drifting back to the coast, said Monica Mazur, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Health Care Agency.

A massive sewer line that runs along the beach will probably be retested, she said.

The Orange County Sanitation District has long maintained that its partly treated sewage is trapped offshore by differences in ocean temperatures.

But a recent study by Scripps Institute of Oceanography and UC Irvine found otherwise.

“That is very, very disturbing,” Huntington Beach Councilwoman Shirley S. Dettloff said of the latest closure.

“What is for me the most distressing part of this is we’ve done so much to try to find out what the sources are and we’ve done so many things so we won’t have a problem,” said Dettloff, who also is a member of the California Coastal Commission.

The city, county, Orange County Sanitation District and other agencies have spent millions of dollars studying the city’s coast.

Millions of gallons of urban runoff are being diverted.

And the sanitation district plans to disinfect its sewage with bleach or an acid used to sterilize hospital equipment.

Dettloff is concerned about another drawn-out summer of mysterious pollution.

“Not finding the source immediately is not only going to cause a lot of expense ... it’s something that will affect our economy even more this time,” Dettloff said.

Environmentalists said that the pollution has become expected.

“I feel like we’ve all been dragged through a war here,” said Christopher J. Evans, executive director of the Surfrider Foundation, based in San Clemente.

“I’m a little bit shellshocked. There is a fear [that the 1999 closures are] going to happen all over again but I have to say, it’s not a dramatic fear because we have a background of dirty beaches in Orange County, in Los Angeles County and in San Diego County.

“We’re well known for it now.”