Getting to the bottom of bacteria problems

Paul Clinton

A study to determine whether boats are unloading their sewage into

the harbor and why there are repeated problems with bacteria

outbreaks is underway.

Using students to help collect data, UC Irvine professor Stanley

Grant took a first round of water samples in Newport Harbor late last

month.

The city hired Grant, who teaches environmental engineering at

UCI, to undertake the study to help understand what’s causing nagging

bacteria outbreaks at beaches in the harbor and Upper Newport Bay.

“This is a small study that is part of a larger project aiming to

understand what’s causing the fecal contamination in the bay,” Grant

said. “We don’t know at this point whether the contamination is

coming from the upper bay or lower bay.”

Between July 26 and July 29, Grant and his students set up

water-quality monitoring equipment and took more than 400 samples of

harbor water on a three-hour rotation.

Grant and his undergraduate students collected the samples at the

Balboa Yacht Basin, the city-controlled section of the marina near

Balboa Island.

Those samples will be analyzed and presented to the city by Sept.

1, Grant said. Two future rounds of testing at two other locations

are planned.

City leaders praised the effort as a way to get to the bottom of a

problem that has caused them some embarrassment.

Catching a boater in the act of dumping sewage has been difficult,

but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, Assistant City Manager Dave

Kiff said.

“It’ll be able to tell us that we either have a problem with

discharges or don’t have a problem,” Kiff said about Grant’s survey.

“There’s always going to be one lazy boater, but we need to determine

the extent of the problem.”

The Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board is requiring

the study as part of the implementation of federal guidelines about

the level of contaminants that can be permitted in the harbor and

Back Bay. The city is moving toward compliance with a federal decree

that requires the bay to be clean for swimming by 2013 and

shell-harvesting by 2019.

Regional board members are paying for the $50,000 study, which is

under the direction of the city.

Newport Harbor also holds a federal designation as a

“no-discharge” harbor. The distinction, given by the Environmental

Protection Agency, came under fire earlier in the year when a New

Jersey congressman floated legislation that would end that

protection.

“Most boaters are very conscientious about not discharging into

bays,” environmentalist Jack Skinner said. “It’s important in Newport

because the popular swimming beaches are so close to the marina.”

In fact, the city counts 35 miles of beaches, snaking around the

harbor and on the northern side of the Coast Highway bridge.

The city has commissioned two other studies to examine the cause

of pollution in the Newport Dunes lagoon and whether polluted urban

runoff is causing some of the bacterial outbreaks.

Grant’s survey is just one of the tools for a solution, Newport

Beach Councilwoman Norma Glover said.

“We have to figure out a way to monitor these boats as they enter

the harbor,” Glover said. “To clean up the water, we’ve got to use a

wide array or solutions.”