Surf City Hopes for State Money

Burdened by the costly search for the source of waterfront contamination, Huntington Beach officials are looking for relief from a proposed $1.97-billion bond issue that is expected to go before voters in March.

The bond issue, which Gov. Gray Davis must approve before it can be put on the ballot, would include $4 million for Huntington Beach to study the causes of biological contamination at the beach.

The city has paid $335,000 so far to try to find the source of the high bacteria levels that closed most of the city’s beaches for two months this summer. And the expense is growing.

Two weeks ago, the City Council passed a budget that included a $925,000 allocation to pay for immediate, midterm and long-range plans for inspecting and upgrading the city’s aging pipelines. System failures often lead to polluted beaches.

Huntington Beach Mayor Peter M. Green said that coastal cities like his are merely caretakers for public beaches and waters and that the state must help pay the maintenance and cleanup costs through bonds or other means.

“This beach is for everyone and not just us in Huntington Beach,” Green said.

The governor has indicated support for the bonds, said Patrick Joyce, a spokesman for state Sen. Ross Johnson (R-Irvine). Johnson added Huntington Beach to the bill and then lobbied for its passage after Green and other city officials sought his help.

Richard Barnard, assistant city administrator, said money from the bonds would allow the city to enter an agreement with an academic institution such as UC Irvine to conduct the study.

Previously, UCI was to be a consultant to the Orange County Sanitation District on the latest search for the bacteria source. But the county agency, which has spent more than $1.2 million during the past three months looking for the cause, said last week that it is giving up its role as the lead investigatory agency.

District officials said they are awaiting results of a $100,000 dye test of the district’s outfall pipe conducted Thursday as evidence that urban runoff, not sewage, is the cause of contamination. Sanitation officials will remain part of a task force looking at the problems of urban runoff.

Tackling urban runoff might pose more of a problem for the city and other agencies, Green said, because it’s a “nonpoint” source of pollution, meaning that it’s from a general area such as a river or flood-control channel that makes it difficult to find the source.

The bond measure would pay for a variety of projects and programs for safe drinking water, clean water, water conservation and flood protection.

Meanwhile, divers monitoring the dye test have found little to suggest the outfall pipe is leaking sewage. But most of the information collected must be downloaded from instruments to a computer and analyzed, a sanitation official said Friday.

Final results are expected today.

The sanitation district serves 2.2 million residents in 21 cities in central Orange County.