Editorial

Next to John Wayne Airport and the ever-present threat of its

expansion, there is probably no bigger concern among Newport Beach

residents than protecting the water quality of the harbor, bay and

beaches, the natural resources that are so crucial to this town.

Water pollution, whether created by sewage spills or sewage plumes or

by the tons of urban runoff that spew into the Back Bay and the Santa Ana

River each year, threatens to do severe harm to Newport’s health, as well

as environmental damage to plants and animals.

We are fisherman, sailors, swimmers and surfers. The beaches need to

be pristine, the harbor waters clean and free of bacteria. Our first

instinct should not be to avoid the water, and we need to ensure that

wildlife and fish can flourish in it.

That’s why it was especially disappointing to hear that the Orange

County Sanitation District, which pumps 240 million gallons of sewage a

day out of an outfall pipe located four and a half miles out from the

Santa Ana River, was unable to determine if that same sewage is

contributing to high bacteria counts in Newport and Huntington Beach

waters.

All of this after the sanitation district’s $5.1 million study of the

sewage plume created by the outfall pipe that many suspect is coming

dangerously close to shore.

Combine that with the inability to stem the urban runoff and trash

that arrives here from inland cities, and you have the reasons why we

strongly support recent strong stands taken by Newport Beach officials.

To start, they have called for the elimination of the sanitation

district’s federal waiver, which allows the district to release partially

treated sewage rather than sewage that has undergone much more thorough

cleaning.

And now, Newport officials have identified nine local waterways as

having zero tolerance to trash and pollutants.

Mayor Tod Ridgeway is firing off a letter to the State Water Resources

Board asking it to list the waterways as “water quality limited.”

The Santa Ana/Delhi Channel, Pelican Point Creek, Pelican Hill

Waterfall, Pelican Point Middle Creek, Buck Gully, Los Trancos Creek,

Muddy Creek, Newport Bay and the Santa Ana River are victims of neglect

by those aforementioned inland cities, says Bob Caustin, founder of the

Newport Beach-based Defend the Bay.

Caustin, a longtime and effective water-quality advocate, said Newport

Beach residents and officials have come a long way toward improving the

runoff problem, and this effort, he hopes, will put the pressure on other

cities like Santa Ana, Tustin, Orange and Irvine to follow suit.

We urge Newport officials to put those who contribute to the pollution

here and in other beach cities on notice.

They need to know that it is past time for them and others to do their

part to preserve our most precious resource, our ocean and the waterways

that feed it.