Newport Beach may explore how to control charter boats

June Casagrande

Charter boats overrunning Lido Village might be reined in through

tidelands permits -- a strategy Mayor Tod Ridgeway wants to look

into.

“It has become an uncontrolled industry in our harbor,” Ridgeway

said of the commercial pleasure boats, often called “party boats,”

that carry large numbers of visitors to Newport Harbor. “We’ve lost

any degree of control over the use of these properties because of how

the annual renewable permits work.”

The problem is most evident in Lido Village, Ridgeway said, where

huge cruise boats block views of the water, congest the harbor and

create traffic and parking problems on land.

Ridgeway has asked city staff to start looking into the matter.

Harbor services director Tony Melum said will he gather information

to present to the city’s Harbor Commission and, ultimately, the City

Council.

Part of the problem, Ridgeway said, is that no one knows for sure

which boats are coming to Newport or where the boats are coming from.

Most of the visiting charter vessels berth at the docks of local

businesses that operate under permits from the city and state.

Currently, the permit process doesn’t contain any controls over the

number, type or origin of the boats that dock here. These business

are concentrated in Lido Village, near the Balboa Fun Zone on the

peninsula and in a few other city locations.

Melum said that the city has not received many complaints about

the tour boats but that there will have to be further study to

determine the extent of the boats’ effects and how the city could

gain greater control. Though many of the permits are issued in

conjunction with state tidelands guidelines, the permits may afford

the flexibility to allow the Harbor Commission or City Council to put

conditions on the commercial dock operators, Melum said.