LOS ANGELES COUNTY : Engineers Scale Back Plan to Move Contaminated Silt

Faced with strong opposition, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has scaled back a plan to haul tons of contaminated silt and sand from Marina del Rey to the Port of Los Angeles to use as fill for a new marina wildlife habitat.

In a concession aimed at winning approval for the controversial project, the Corps said it will seek permission to immediately remove only 130,000 cubic yards of the sediment, which threatens to choke off boating at the county-owned marina, instead of the 530,000 cubic yards it had proposed.

The action Tuesday came as the Corps asked the state Coastal Commission, meeting in Long Beach, to delay until September its request to remove the sediment, place it in special plastic tubes and bury the tubes in a shallow area of the harbor at San Pedro as part of the port’s $150-million expansion.

Opponents have warned that the dredging could cause environmentally damaging materials to spread at the mouth of the marina. They also say that the containers, which have never been approved for such a project in California, may leak once they are placed in the harbor.