Mayor's Walk Focuses on Poche Beach Pollution

San Clemente Mayor Lori Donchak used her monthly mayor’s walk Saturday to highlight the chronically polluted Poche Beach and a water treatment plant built to reduce the problem.

Poche Beach, located just north of San Clemente along Pacific Coast Highway, recently received an “F” rating and was ranked as California's fifth-dirtiest beach by Heal the Bay, an environmental group that monitors pollution levels at the state’s beaches.

Saturday’s event attracted more than 100 mostly frustrated residents who voiced their opinions and heard from city, county and South Coast Water District officials.

“This is an amazing turnout," said Donchak, who started off her speech flanked by a girl holding a cracked surfboard that said: “This system is as broken as my surfboard.”    

One of the main objectives of Donchak’s walk was to explain how the water filtration plant works.

Using an inflatable dam, it pools urban runoff from the Prima Deshecha Channel, removes solid waste through a sand filter, and then kills bacteria with ultraviolet light. Once this process is complete, the water is pumped into a holding pond on the other side of the dam before it eventually reaches the ocean about 100 feet away. 

However, it is that short distance between the pond and the ocean that has caused so much controversy.

The plant is able to filter out about 94 percent of the water's bacteria, but the Coastal Commission requires the water to be held in the pond before it is sent into the ocean. During this holding period, some bacteria are able to return to the water before it is sent trickling into the surf.

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out,” said San Clemente assistant city engineer Tom Bonigut. “If you put [the water] in this pond it is probably going to create a problem and not get clean.” 

What many residents deem a simple solution to the problem—letting the water flow directly from the filtration plant to the ocean—is complicated by bureaucracy.

Although the County of Orange manages Poche Beach, the Coastal Commission and the San Diego Regional Water Board must also sign off on any projects involving water runoff. Additionally, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must approve any maintenance the county wants to do on creek outlets.

“It’s frustrating,” said Bonigut. 

The county recently gained approval from the Coastal Commission to temporarily bypass the holding pond and discharge treated storm water straight into the ocean this summer in order to collect data on its effectiveness. However, the temporary study must gain approval from the San Diego Regional Water Board.

For residents like Paige Foreman, a member of the nearby Shorecliff’s Homeowners Association, the wait for a viable solution has been frustrating.

“I know [the county] is bound by regulatory agencies, but they should be on the phone with those regulatory agencies and putting pressure on them on a regular basis,” she said. “This is kind of the stepchild beach of the county and we keep getting swept under the rug."

A multi-agency meeting is planned for July 12 to discuss solutions to Poche Beach’s pollution problems. Until then, Foreman and other residents plan on continuing to push the various agencies to act quickly.

“This is a great beach and people could be utilizing it if it was clean,” Foreman said.