On Sept. 8, an unprecedented region wide blackout threw communities from Orange County to northern?Mexico and east to Yuma, Ariz. into darkness. La Jollans experienced long waits at blacked-out traffic lights, dinner by candlelight and dark beaches lit only by the glow of phosphorescent plankton. District 1 City Councilwoman Sherri Lightner used her Facebook page to alert residents to the boil water advisory, which affected La Jollans west of I-5 and north to La Jolla Parkway. On Sept. 10, volunteers from San Diego Coastkeeper’s water quality monitoring program discovered record-breaking concentrations of fecal indicator bacteria, ammonia, phosphorus and low concentrations of oxygen in the Los Peñasquitos Lagoon, the site of a 1.9 million-gallon raw sewage spill caused by San Diego’s power outage on Sept. 8. The spill at Pump Station No. 64 — located at 10745 Roselle St. — was discovered just before 6 p.m. on Sept. 8. Beaches north of the Scripps Pier to Solana Beach were immediately closed due to suspected water contamination from the spill. On Sept. 13, however, Scripps Pier and Black’s Beach reopened following city field measurements indicating those waters were safe for swimming. Torrey Pines State Beach remained closed at press time, and city officials reported that beaches near the Los Peñasquitos outlet are likely to remain closed throughout the week. Although some La Jolla beachgoers may be pleased by the news of some reopenings, the spill resulted in more than just beach closures. According to Coastkeeper’s study of the Los Peñasquitos Lagoon — typically one of the top three healthiest watersheds in the county — bacterial concentrations were at least 600 times higher than safe thresholds allow. “It was higher than our test equipment can measure,” said San Diego Coastkeeper lab coordinator Travis Pritchard. “It’s the worst water quality we’ve ever seen here.” Volunteers reported being struck by a pungent smell of sewage and noted a grey tint in the water that is usually clear. Pritchard said dissolved oxygen levels were “as close to zero as you can get,” which suffocated fish and sent them floating to the surface and washing up along the bank. “With incidents like these big spills, the effects that you see are immediate, like the fish kill because of the lack of oxygen,” said Coastkeeper scientist Jen Kovecses. “For humans, viruses and micro-bacteria can make us sick depending on our level of exposure to the water.” Kovecses said the most common illnesses are temporary gastrointestinal or nasal problems, although chronic illnesses from direct exposure to contaminated water of this kind can also occur. “When you look at the long-term ecosystem impacts, it depends on how and where the spill happens,” she said. “In this case, these two million gallons of sewage spilled into a creek that’s not flowing at its maximum, and it encountered cattails that created a high concentration of sewage.” According to tests by the Department of Environmental Health, some of the bacterial measurements are actually increasing because a bulk of the sewage has settled upstream. “Yesterday (Sept. 12), there was still one million gallons of sewage ponded in the creek, which means that a million other gallons has moved out towards the beach depending on the currents,” Kovecses said. On Sept. 13, the city began a cleanup effort to remove the sewage by pumping it out of the creek and back into the sewer system. It is unlikely, however, that they will be able to get all of the sewage out, Kovecses said. “This is a general call to support our regional agencies,” she said. “They should be doing the most they can to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. We have power outages all the time and this is something that we need to pay attention to — why this power outage caused this extent of spillage, and we need to mitigate the impacts that may occur from it.” Additional sewage spills as a result of the power outage included a 120,000-gallon spill into the Sweetwater River from Pump Station No. 1 and a 3.8 million-gallon sewage spill south of the Mexican border into the Tijuana River. For updated information on beach closures and advisories, visit www.sdwatersheds.org/wiki/San_Diego_Beach _Status for an interactive map or call (619) 338-2073 for updates on San Diego County’s 24-hour hotline.