Beach Report Card - California Coastkeeper Alliance

tored during the AB411 time period.Orange County’s grades for both year-rounddry weather and the AB411 time period wereexcellent, and again above the state average.97% of monitoring locations received an A or Bduring the AB411 time period and 96% did soduring year-round dry weather (see Figure 4-3).Poche Beach and Doheny Beach displayed theonly poor water quality grades (F) in the countyduring the AB411 time period.Winter dry weather grades between Novemberand March were 8% better than last year’s with91% of beaches receiving A or B grades. All sitesbetween Doheny Beach to 4000 feet south ofSan Juan Creek exhibited poor dry weather waterquality during the winter months.A dry weather filtration/UV disinfection plantat the Poche Creek outlet was completed overtwo years ago (March 2009) but has yet to meetits design performance specifications. Despite a94% water treatment efficiency average, treatedoutflow exceeded the single sample and geometricmean standards for Enterococcus 15%and 57% of the time, respectively. An extendedperiod of treatment performance trials wascompleted in May 2010. Treated discharge wasunable to be delivered to the surfzone, as it isrequired by resource agencies to discharge intoa nearby beach pond prior to ocean entry. Datacollected during the 2010 performance trialswere highly suggestive that a pond bypass oftreated outflow would substantially lower theextent of surfzone exceedances. Due to theseresults, on May 11, 2011 the Coastal Commissionapproved the County’s proposal for a 2011summer demonstration trial, which would relocatethe treated outflow around the beachpond. The trial will demonstrate whether abeach pond bypass can in fact improve surfzonebeach water quality at Poche Beach. ASource Identification Pilot Program (SIPP) projectstarting this summer will hopefully identifythe lingering causes of poor water quality.FIGURE 4-42010-2011 Orange County Water Quality and Seven-Year Average 2003-2010 (in percentages)AB411 (101 locations)7-Year Average (104 locations)DRY (84 locations)7-Year Average (100 locations)WET (84 locations)7-Year Avg (100 loc.)weather compared to 42% in 2009-2010.Figure 4-4 illustrates an assessment of this year’s grade percentages at OrangeCounty beaches compared to the seven-year average. Orange County once againdisplayed excellent dry weather water quality and exceeded the AB411 seven-yearaverage (93%) with 97% A or B grades. Year-round dry weather water quality resultsexceeded the seven-year average by 5% with 96% A or B grades.Sewage Spill SummaryOrange County experienced 16 sewage spills (with known volumes totaling approximately160,900 gallons) that led to beach closures this past year. Seven of these weremajor spills (>1000 gallons), accounting for nearly 99% of the known spill volume forthe county. 78% of these major spills occurred during the late December storms andaccount for 43.2 beach mile days of closure.Major spills included an approximately 21,000-gallon sewage release via a line break,resulting in the closure of all Little Corona Beach for three days in early July 2010. Apump station failure released approximately 7,000 gallons of sewage on Jan. 8, 2011,resulting in a two-day closure of one-quarter of a mile upcoast and downcoast ofAliso Creek at Aliso County Beach in Laguna Beach.Wet weather water quality in Orange Countythis past year was fair, with 64% of monitoringlocations receiving A or B grades during wet32