Hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw sewage leaked into the Ventura River on Monday after a major sewer line was washed out by flooding near Old Creek Road between Ojai and Ventura.

The sewage flowed into San Antonio Creek about a half-mile above where the creek empties into the Ventura River.

About 830,000 gallons of sewage flows daily through the pipe, said John Correa, general manager of the Ojai Valley Sanitary District.

"There's nothing we can do to fix it right this instant," Correa said.

"My staff is figuring out what to do to use a bypass, a pump and temporary pipelines on the ground. But we can't do that until floodwaters have both stopped and receded. That's why it's important that the public knows and doesn't get into the water."

The sewer line is part of the district's 120-mile system, which provides sanitary sewer service to about 20,000 residents of the City of Ojai and the unincorporated Ojai Valley. The line collects and moves wastewater to the Ojai Valley Treatment Plant south of Casitas Springs.

The washed-out line is a major 18-inch trunk line, much larger than the typical 8-inch street lines.

District technicians noticed the break about 8 a.m. after pressure in the system shot up and receded, a sign that something was wrong.

Correa said the sewage would flow unabated until the rain runoff slowed sufficiently for crews to fix the problem. If weather forecasts were correct, Correa said the district might be able to reroute the line tonight.

Sewage also spilled Sunday night from a district pumping station on Santa Ana Road on the west side of the Ventura River.

The sewage went into a drainage ditch after rainwater overloaded the sewer system, causing the pump to malfunction. Correa said he did not know how much spilled in that incident.

High flows in the Ventura River should minimize the impact of the spills, said Jim Edmondson, Southern California manager of the nonprofit group California Trout, a group dedicated to protecting river habitat.

"Fortunately, the Ventura River is at a high-flow stage right now, so there's a dilution factor going on," Edmondson said. "So it's not as extreme or toxic as it would be had it occurred at a time when there was little flow."

The Ventura County Environmental Health Division issued a warning to avoid storm-water runoff for 72 hours because there is a potential for the water to carry disease-causing bacteria. The division advised the public to avoid contact with ocean water at all Ventura County beaches and warned that shellfish should not be eaten.

Richard Hauge, program coordinator for the division's Ventura County Ocean Water Quality Monitoring program, said he would be taking samples from 20 beaches today.

The results will be in Wednesday, he said.

"I would suspect they'd still come back with high bacteria levels," he said.

In addition to the bacteria and physical hazard, Hauge said the division is advising people to stay out of the water during the storms and for three days after.

"It's incredibly dangerous," he said.