One of San Diego’s biggest beach holidays comes with a warning this year. A handful of beaches up and down the county's 70-mile coastline have been affected by closures or contamination advisories.
One closure came in Coronado, though it was soon lifted. There, a sewage spill fouled the waters near Coronado Bay Road along the Silver Strand.
“Yesterday the city of Coronado reported to our program that they had about a 1,300 gallon sewage spill. So they proactively reported that so we could take action and close that water area for contact,” said Heather Buonomo, who oversees San Diego County’s beach and bay monitoring
She said beach closures occur when sewage or chemical spills are confirmed in ocean water. Another beach closure this week, which has become an ongoing event, was in effect for Imperial Beach.
The county declared beach advisories for La Jolla Children’s Pool and a Cardiff beach near San Elijo Lagoon.
“And what the advisory does is, it’s alerting the public to say that there is a high level of bacteria. It could make you sick, and you need to make your own decision of whether it is safe, personally, for you to swim in that water,” Buonomo said.
Buonomo added that dredging in the San Elijo Lagoon led to the beach advisory in Cardiff, as that process also causes bacteria levels to rise. Beach closures are lifted when water testing shows the pollution levels are again acceptable to state standards.
How long does it take for beach closures to be lifted? Buonomo said it depends.
“The flow of the ocean, the direction of the swells. The wind. All of those really play into how quickly that sewage may be dissipated into the larger ocean and bring those bacteria levels down,” she said.
So far none of San Diego's most popular beaches have closures or advisories. Buonomo says the Imperial Beach coastline, near the very polluted Tijuana River, has been closed with only intermittent openings for the past thousand days.
Anyone who wants to check San Diego beaches for closures and advisories can go to sdbeachinfo.com
