EDITORIAL

It was a bad week for our beaches.

On Tuesday, the Orange County Health Care Agency closed the beach

around Magnolia Street after an unknown quantity of sewage spilled from

possible cracks, breaks or a separations in sewage lines from the nearby

lifeguard headquarters and restrooms.

The area will remain closed until the source of the contamination is

removed and water-quality testing meets standards.

Perhaps more far-reaching and more troubling, new research surfaced

suggesting that the partially treated sewage that is pumped off

Huntington is surfacing back near shore. It could very well be the cause

of much of the city’s water-quality problems, including the summer-long

closure in 1999.

The latest research, conducted by UC Irvine and Scripps Institution of

Oceanography in La Jolla, clearly debunks the long-held theory that the

sewage plume is trapped beneath the ocean’s surface by warm water, study

participants say.

It is compelling evidence that a waiver the district has, which allows

for the release of the partially treated sewage, needs to be revoked.

Huntington is at the front of the effort to make certain the exemption is

not renewed when it expires next year. That effort, with or without this

additional reminder, must continue. And with other cities jumping aboard,

it seems increasingly likely that the waiver soon will be history.

Still, Orange County Sanitation District officials disagree with the

findings, vehemently. They question how this new study, based on the same

data the district has used, could come to an opposite conclusion. They

also plan to release another study in May, which will include additional

information they say supports their findings that the treated sewage is

not a potential hazard.

That study will have to contain significant and nearly irrefutable

evidence to outweigh the UCI and Scripps findings, not to mention the

yellow warning ribbons now stretched across our beach.