Too much trash finding safe harbor, report says

Alex Coolman

NEWPORT BEACH -- Too much trash is flowing into Newport Harbor and other

Orange County harbors despite efforts to contain the problem, according

to a report released today by the Orange County Grand Jury.

The report, the result of six months of work by the grand jury’s

environmental and transportation committee, is an assessment of the way

strong rains sweep garbage through flood control channels, polluting

downstream areas like Newport, Huntington Beach and Dana Point.

Karen Evarts, a committee member and Newport Beach resident who

coauthored the report, said she thinks the findings of the study may be

“a wake-up call” for Orange County cities.

“Flood control channels don’t know any boundaries,” she said. “They don’t

know city boundaries, or county boundaries.”

The large scale of such flood channels, Evarts said, means that broad

thinking is required to deal with them.

“We came to feel that there’s really a need for a multi-jurisdictional

effort to come up with solutions,” she said.

The study focuses on the way “first flush” rains that come at the

beginning of the wet season bring waste into harbors. It lists several

findings and recommendations, including the following:

* There are too many inadequately filtered storm drains in coastal

cities.

* There is no “goal-driven” program, except in Dana Point, to retrofit

older storm drains to make them more effective at filtering waste.

* Trash makes up “most” of the large-scale pollution in county harbors.

Newport Beach is legally required to respond in writing within two to

three months to many of these points, Evarts said.

While some of the jury’s conclusions struck Deputy City Manager Dave Kiff

as quite reasonable, he said the report didn’t seem to give the city

enough credit in certain respects.

“I think we’re doing more than they think we are,” he said.

In particular, he noted that the city has a number of storm drain

filtration systems in areas like Cannery Village and near Fashion Island.

The city also uses filtration devices like the Boudreaux Boom that

strings across the mouth of the Delhi Channel to skim garbage from storm

flow before it enters the bay.

Local water quality advocate Jack Skinner said he was intrigued by the

emphasis on storm drains in the report.

“I thought their suggestions were very good suggestions, but the problem

is a daunting one,” he said.

While Skinner said he felt filtering systems would certainly be useful,

he noted that it is common practice for pedestrians in inland cities to

dump waste directly into storm channels.

“The drains themselves would not be as much as a help for that type of

trash,” he said. “[Waste] doesn’t have a chance to get caught in the

storm drains lining the streets.”

Evarts said these types of responses are acceptable, from the jury’s

point of view.

“[Cities] can say, ‘We don’t agree [with the report],’ ” she noted.