Children play on the sand at Mother’s Beach Sunday while a nearby sign warns them against water contact. Photo by Sarah Bennett.
As the city braces itself for yet another heatwave, the Long Beach Health Department was forced to stick its yellow and red “Beach Closed” signs into the sand at Mother’s Beach, warning visitors against making contact with what could be sewage-contaminated water.
A low-volume sewage spill in the Cerritos Channel was reported and contained on Sunday, leading the Health Department to close nearby Mother’s Beach and Marine Stadium to water contact until further testing could be done. Health Department estimates put the relatively small spill at about 1000 gallons and say that it originated in the Bixby Terrace neighborhood due to the failure of a privately owned sump pump.
“The pump moves waste water upgrade from a private sewer system to the city’s system and the sump failed,” said Nelson Kerr, Director of Environmental Health. “We do not know the exact cause of the failure at this point, but the failure resulted in the sewage backup/overflow. The overflow went into the storm drain, which leads to the Cerritos Channel.”
Kerr says that the spill was reported by a resident as lasting about 17 hours, starting at around 7PM Saturday night. Though the exact damage caused by the spill is still unknown, the Health Department will be performing testing on various sites in the bay to measure potential impacts, but expects them to be minimal.
“This is a relatively small spill into a very large body of water,” said Kerr. “These types of spills will generally clear on their own with no additional clean up.”
This is the second time this year that the Health Department has had to close down local beaches due to a sewage spill. In May of this year, the entire shoreline from Downtown to Belmont Shore was closed to water contact due to a 5,500 gallon sewage spill that originated near Highland Park and traveled down the Los Angeles River into Long Beach waters. Beaches were reopened the next day when testing determined that bacteria levels were within State standards.
