An accidental sewage dump this weekend caused a 200-yard stretch of beach in the gated street of Victoria Pt. near Broad Beach in Western Malibu to be closed through the weekend and eventually reopened on Monday.
The cause of the dump, which is estimated at 500 pounds of “diluted sewage,” is still under investigation by the City of Malibu and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.
It is not clear whether the beach reopening was the result of clear test results or merely the passage of time.
“Since the incident occurred during a rain advisory and we were also not safely able to take samples on Monday, more than 72 hours has passed,” L.A. County Environmental Health Specialist Nick Brakband said in an email shared with The Malibu Times.
“Our experience with rain advisories and long standing data indicate that the high bacteria counts would have cleared, and the beach has been re-opened.”
Craig George, Deputy Building Official with the City of Malibu Environmental Sustainability Department, explained that the working theory is a valve failure at the pump station for the County’s wastewater treatment plant in Malibu West, though he would not go into detail as to why the failure occurred.
“There’s a resident there that may have … “ George said before trailing off.
“We’re just working with the County in trying to figure out if we can find a solution for what caused this and what we can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
County spokespeople offered a little more information as to the possible cause of the spill. “It’s still to be determined exactly what happened, but it looks as if … there was a residence under some sort of renovation, and [with] their line meeting up with our line, there may have been a failure,” L.A. Public Works spokesperson Mike Kaspar said, adding he didn’t want to speculate as to specifics.
The spill, which occurred in the 31500 block of Victoria Point Road, temporarily closed a private beach only accessible to the handful of oceanfront mansions just east of Broad Beach.
In that area, there is a single-family residence jutting out over the water that is currently visibly undergoing renovations, though the address of the location where the spill may have occurred has not been verified.
“Something happened in the connection between their line and ours, and there was sewage that spilled out,” Kaspar said. “We at that point came in, shut down that site, that area, and then called Public Health.”
The County Department of Public Health kept the beach closed over the weekend after the spill occurred Friday. According to Kaspar, spills of this kind are taken very seriously within the County.
“These kinds of things are high priority. If anything happens, we’re very good at getting crews out there,” Kaspar said. “That’s a pretty serious situation for us so, I know we do everything we can to get that taken care of.”
Despite the dumping of 500 pounds of diluted sewage into the ocean, there was a notable lack of clarity in communication among various government agencies, with the City of Malibu, L.A. County Lifeguards and spokespeople within L.A. Public Works unable to tell on Monday whether the beach was open or closed.