Upper Newport Bay to be restored

Alicia Robinson

The California Coastal Conservancy announced on Thursday that it will

give the county a $12.5-million grant that will allow the restoration

of Upper Newport Bay to begin.

Design of the project, now underway, should be completed by

September 2004, with construction beginning in fall 2005, said Donald

Spencer, the project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“We’re very excited,” Orange County coastal engineer Susan Brodeur

said. “We’re trying to keep the project on track, and this really

helps.”

Restoration of the 1,000-acre bay will involve dredging more than

2 million cubic yards of sediment from two basins in the bay,

dredging and deepening channels in the bay and creating a new island

for least terns, which are endangered birds, Spencer said.

The bay is the largest tidal wetland in Southern California. It

will gain about 42 acres of open water from the restoration project.

The corps is committing more than $25 million to the work and will

partner with local sponsoring agencies to restore the area. The

county is the current sponsor, but negotiations are underway to

decide which other groups may be involved.

Restoration is needed because excessive flow of sediment and

nutrients into the bay -- particularly from San Diego Creek --

threatens fish and wildlife by turning open water into mudflats and

spurring overgrowth of algae.

“If nothing is done, then that sediment is going to fill in the

upper bay, and as a result, we will not have the quality of wildlife

that we had before,” Spencer said.

Bob Caustin, founder of the environmental group Defend the Bay

said restoration of the upper bay has been needed for about 20 years.

Some dredging was done about seven years ago, but that was only one

third of what was needed, he said.

Urban development creates more rooftops and pavement, so more

water runs into channels such as San Diego Creek instead of being

absorbed into the ground. The water carries with it all the runoff of

civilization -- fertilizers, pesticides and other pollution -- and

this ends up in the bay, he said.

The restoration project will be a good start toward cleaning up

the bay, but after it’s done, environmental groups will have to work

to maintain it, Caustin said.

“It’s going to be an ongoing battle,” he said. “This is going to

hopefully bring it back toward a balanced community. Then, once it’s

done, we’re going to have to tighten down on the pollution that’s

coming into the bay. Business as usual should not be allowed.”

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

She can be reached at (949) 764-4330 or by e-mail at

alicia.robinson@latimes.com.