Long Beach Beaches Stay Closed After 29,000-Gallon Sewage Spill in Belmont Shore

A pressurized sewer main broke Friday evening near Livingston Drive and Second Street, sending about 14,000 gallons into the ocean. Repairs are done, and water testing starts Monday before any of the city's 15 swimming sites can reopen.

By Herald Staff · Nov. 1, 2026, 5:30 PM ET

A wide, empty sandy beach under a cloudy gray sky, seen from a bluff-top walkway lined with a white railing, lawn and palm trees, with orange poppies on the slope and the long Belmont Pier stretching into calm water in the distance. — The beach below Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach, with the Belmont Pier in the distance, in 2017. All of the city's beaches, bays and lagoons are closed to swimming until water testing meets state standards. Photo: Terry Lucas / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 (license).

Every beach, bay and lagoon in Long Beach stayed closed to swimmers on Sunday, two days after a broken sewer pipe in Belmont Shore spilled about 29,000 gallons of wastewater, roughly half of which reached the ocean. City health officials say the water will not reopen until testing, set to begin Monday, shows it meets state standards.

The spill began at about 6:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, near Livingston Drive and Second Street, when a force main failed beside the city's Sewer Lift Station 12, Long Beach Utilities said in an update. A force main is a pressurized pipe that pushes wastewater across flat or uphill ground. Crews and the city's cleanup contractor, Ocean Blue, recovered about 15,000 gallons, but an estimated 14,000 gallons made it to the sea, according to the utility.

The city's first notice, issued early Saturday, put the spill at about 27,000 gallons; the utility later raised the estimate to 29,000.

All 15 Swimming Sites Closed

City Health Officer Dr. Cliff Okada ordered the temporary closure of all open coastal swimming areas, including the open beaches, bay swimming areas and lagoons, according to the city's press release. Long Beach Utilities said the order covers all 15 of the city's beach and open swimming sites. State law requires beaches to be closed and posted when sewage reaches the coast, and the city said it acted "out of an abundance of caution."

Long Beach has more than six miles of public beach where health officials monitor water quality, the Los Angeles Times reported. The Times noted that full closures like this one are rare and usually follow serious emergencies such as raw sewage main breaks, fire debris or lightning. Targeted bacteria warnings at individual beaches are far more common.

Officials asked people to pay close attention to warning signs posted at the beach and to avoid any contact with the water while the closure is in effect.

Repairs Done, Cause Unknown

Joy Contreras, a spokesperson for Long Beach Utilities, told LAist that emergency repairs to the main were finished Saturday night. "The Utilities Department will investigate the cause of the force main break, as a break of this magnitude is extremely rare," she said Sunday.

The utility said wastewater had been rerouted through a secondary line and that no customers lost sewer service. Police helped with traffic control and moved parked cars while crews dug down to reach the broken pipe. The spill was not related to the weekend rainstorm, ABC7 reported.

Rain Pushed Back Testing

The storm did affect the timeline. Because rain was expected over the weekend, the city said, water sampling would start Monday and continue until results meet state recreational water standards. The Long Beach Health Department will decide when each swimming area reopens.

The rain created a separate problem along the rest of the county's coast. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has issued an ocean water quality rain advisory for county beaches through at least Tuesday, Nov. 3, warning that runoff can carry bacteria, chemicals and trash into the surf near storm drains, creeks and rivers. Downtown Los Angeles got half an inch of rain on Halloween, and some foothill gauges topped 2 inches.

A Familiar Problem, From a New Source

Sewage closures are nothing new in Long Beach, which sits at the mouths of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers. Most of them start upstream, when spills in other cities flow down the rivers to the coast. Over one recent five-year span, the city's beaches were closed for 63 days because of upstream spills, the Long Beach Post reported. This one started inside the city, on Long Beach's own sewer system.

The Post also pointed to a gap in the rules. The state's strict closure requirements apply to sewage but not to every kind of contamination. In June, runoff from a large warehouse fire in Boyle Heights carried potentially toxic chemicals toward Long Beach with little public warning, and the beaches stayed open.

The closure comes at the end of a hard few weeks for the coast. Late October brought record high tides that pushed seawater into coastal streets in Orange County.

For the latest status of Long Beach beaches, the city's Water Hotline is 562-570-4199, and updates are posted at longbeach.gov/beachwaterquality. To report a sewage spill, call 562-570-4129 on weekdays during business hours, or Long Beach Fire dispatch at 911 after hours and on weekends.

Original reporting by The Los Angeles Herald, drawing on the City of Long Beach, Long Beach Utilities, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the Los Angeles Times, LAist, the Long Beach Post and ABC7, as linked above.