Environment

Sewage Spill Closes Dog Beach

By Ed Joyce / Reporter

Published June 29, 2009 at 12:35 PM PDT

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

The San Diego County Department of Environmental Health has closed a section of Ocean Beach due to a sewage spill.

Environmental Health Department officials closed Dog Beach in OB because of a nearly 15,000-gallon sewage spill.

The agency says the sewage spill happened Sunday night at the intersection of Del Cero Avenue and Airoso Avenue in the Adobe Falls area of San Diego.

Mark McPherson with the health department says the sewage spill was caused by debris blockage in a manhole.

He says city crews removed the debris but not until about 15,000 gallons of sewage flowed into a storm drain that leads to the San Diego River.

"Signs have been posted at Dog Beach to prevent people from going into the water," McPherson says.

McPherson says the county has tested the water and will test the water again before Dog Beach would be reopened to the public.

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He says the earliest the area would be reopened would be Wednesday.

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Ed Joyce was the environment reporter and afternoon news anchor for KPBS-FM. Before joining KPBS, he worked as an editor/columnist with Copley News Service in San Diego. Ed has an extensive background in newspaper, radio, web and TV journalism. After graduating with a B.A. in Communications from the University of Washington in Seattle, Ed began a career in broadcast journalism. His work has included stints in public broadcasting, commercial broadcasting and education -- working as an affiliate professor of communication and reporter at the University of Idaho and Washington State University in Pullman, Wash. During the past 20 years he has worked in radio, TV and print as a news reporter, anchor, writer, editor and producer. Along the way he has won numerous awards for general news reporting, newswriting, feature and issue reporting and breaking news reporting from The Associated Press, The Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego Press Club and other organizations. During the mid-1990s, while working for Oregon Public Broadcasting, he was a frequent contributor to National Public Radio, including a feature report on the memorial service for 14 U.S. Forest Service "hotshots" who died fighting a wildfire in Colorado (the crew was based in a central Oregon town). He’s also filed reports with Marketplace, KQED’s California Report and Climate Watch and with national and regional networks throughout the United States. At KPBS, Ed continues his contributions to National Public Radio and other national and regional news organizations. He has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and San Diego Press Club for his environmental reporting at KPBS-FM-TV and for producing and anchoring radio newscasts. In 2007 he was selected a National Press Foundation fellow for Understanding Violent Weather II program. The seminars were held at the National Weather Center in Norman, Okla. In 2008 he spoke at a UC San Diego conference on U.S. National Security as part of the school’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Ed led a discussion with the 18 foreign government officials and academics about the political debate over climate change. In 2010, Ed was elected to a three-year term on the board of the San Diego Press Club.

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