Beach Closures Reflect Priorities

* For the second time in less than 10 years, the greater Huntington Beach coastline has been hit with a localized ecological and recreational disaster.

Soaring bacteria counts in late June alerted the Orange County Health Care Agency to declare parts of Huntington State Beach closed to water access.

Huntington State Beach, the second-most-visited state park in the 250-park system, with 2.5 million visitors in 1997-98, was closed to water access some 65 days during the summer.

In late August the closure extended into Huntington City Beach, which claims 10 million yearly visitors, and further north, closing almost five miles of some of the world’s most heavily accessed recreational surf zone.

Predictably, throughout the closure many business leaders and a few politicians paid scant attention to the massive loss of recreational use of this stretch of coast, and more ominously the larger looming national problem of urban runoff to the ocean.

Swimmers, surfers and sand castle builders were all banned from access to the Pacific Ocean, where tens of thousands migrate for regular, sometimes daily year-round recreation.

Instead of supporting the people’s hard-won health and safety victories in the recent implementation of the law that allows the county health officer to control the posting and closure of contaminated beaches through science instead of politics, a few politicians have actually been working toward a legislative “solution” that would gut the precious scientific safeguards and let local politicians decide when to reopen polluted beaches! We wish to commend the Orange County Health Care Agency and the Orange County Sanitation District for following the health and safety laws of California and taking prompt and sound action to protect those of us who enter waters along our coast.

We are still concerned that no “official source” of the high bacteria counts has been identified, although it may point to contaminated urban runoff within the city of Huntington Beach.

We continue to offer our assistance and members’ expertise to help resolve this important safety issue, and, more important, to work toward permanent solutions “upstream” for the future long-term health and restoration of our coastline.

CHRISTOPHER J. EVANS

Executive Director

Surfrider Foundation

San Clemente