O.C. Officials OK System to Divert Runoff

The county’s fight against urban runoff that pollutes beaches got a boost Tuesday when supervisors approved a system of permanent dams and pumps to divert debris from part of the county’s coastline to a local treatment plant.

Nearly $3 million has already been allocated by various state water agencies to pay for the system, which employs such high technology as an inflatable rubber dam to divert 95% of contaminated dry-season runoff from the Talbert Channel and Santa Ana River.

This latest action follows several smaller, temporary projects undertaken by the county.

The dam, while permanent, can be deflated in a matter of hours if a heavy storm that would inundate sanitation facilities with runoff is forecast, said Kenneth R. Smith, chief engineer and deputy director of county public works.

Approval of the plan allows county staff to open the bidding period for the projects on Sept. 26, said a spokesman for Supervisor Jim Silva. Silva made the motion for approval at the board meeting Tuesday.

Supervisors have pushed coastal projects to the forefront in the last two years, including allocating funds for water quality tests.

The system calls for an inflatable rubber dam spanning the 80-foot Talbert Channel in Huntington Beach, excavating a well and installing pumps in the middle of the Santa Ana River downstream of the San Diego Freeway in Fountain Valley, and installing a secondary pump at a station in Huntington Beach.

Smith said another rubber-dam project, for the Greenville-Banning Channel in Huntington Beach, is expected to come before the board for approval next month.

Urban runoff containing animal feces, pesticides, oil from parking lots and toxins from cleaning solutions is carried to the ocean via a maze of pipes, rivers and flood-control channels.

Runoff is the major cause of pollution at the nation’s beaches.

Los Angeles County suffers the worst urban runoff problem in the country, officials said, despite increased regulation and cleanup efforts.

After much of Huntington Beach’s coastline was closed in 1999 because of high ocean bacteria counts, regulators zeroed in on urban runoff as the cause.

But data compiled by The Times show that outflow pipes, even those 20 miles or more from the ocean, caused all of the 40 beach closures last year in Orange County.

Largely overlooked in this equation has been the raw human waste slipping into the waters from broken, seeping or stopped-up pipes via storm drains or creeks that empty into the ocean.

Ocean conservation groups such as the San Clemente-based Surfrider Foundation have argued that in addition to curbing urban runoff, authorities should push for better maintenance of the county’s aging water and sanitation infrastructure.