Melinda Burns, Santa Barbara News-Press
“Researchers have discovered the hepatitis A virus in water samples from South Coast beaches, a creek and the city’s sewage treatment plant, raising questions about the potential risk to the public’s health.
For the present, however, that threat appears not to have materialized into an actual source for widespread disease.
Heal the Ocean, a citizens group, collected the samples at six local beaches and one creek in October and sent them to a University of Southern California laboratory for analysis. The lab found the hepatitis A virus in samples taken in the surf zone at Leadbetter Beach and the east end of Goleta Beach, Las Palmas Creek in Hope Ranch, and the treated wastewater at the city’s El Estero plant. . .”