In 2024, Orange County reported 71 sewage spills, with only three leading to beach closures. That’s a major drop from the 25-year average, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency. This is a promising sign of progress, one that reflects decades of advocacy and action from Orange County Coastkeeper.
In the late 1990s, Coastkeeper founder Garry Brown saw a much different picture. Annual spills numbered in the hundreds, sometimes over a thousand. That crisis drove Garry to establish Coastkeeper in 1999 to push for long-overdue system change and reduce pollution in our waters.
Since then, our advocacy has helped drive major improvements, including the switch to full secondary treatment at OC San and securing OCTA Measure M funds for urban runoff upgrades.
But the work isn’t over. We now better understand the harm that excess nutrients in runoff cause, contributing to ocean acidification, harmful algal blooms, and dead zones. These are urgent threats, as seen in the tragic domoic acid poisoning emergency unfolding along our coast.
One area of growing concern is Laguna Beach. In recent years, the county’s largest spills have come from failing infrastructure in this region, including a 150,000-gallon spill in November 2023. Laguna is also home to many of Orange County’s Marine Protected Areas, designated zones along the coast to protect and preserve marine life and habitats. Dumping excess nutrients into an area with such rich biodiversity would be disastrous for our coastal ecosystem.
We’ve made real progress, but we won’t stop until sewage spills are a thing of the past.
