Paddling out at Huntington Beach, Seal Beach, Sunset Beach or Palos Verdes is probably inadvisable until authorities confirm a massive sewage spill in the Los Angeles River hasn’t tainted the water.
For now, beaches in Long Beach are closed because of the two-and-a-half million-gallon spill that started yesterday and worsened today. The spill occurred when an 87-year-old sewer pipe in the Boyle Heights neighborhood, near downtown L.A., burst and flowed into the river, a waterway whose mouth is in the Los Angeles Harbor in Long Beach.
Although the spill took place some 20 miles from the harbor, officials closed the beaches fearing the sewage could flow down the riverbed, into the harbor and to the ocean. On Tuesday morning, the city of Long Beach started testing water quality but hasn’t made those results public, so there’s no way to know if the water is contaminated.
The pipe started leaking on Monday afternoon and despite efforts to fix it, the break worsened today. According to the L.A. Times, there haven’t been any sightings of sewage in Long Beach, but until there’s confirmation the water is clean, maybe stick to land-based activities. Yoga, anyone?
