Muddied waters

Alicia Robinson

Faith is said to move mountains, but it doesn’t dig out a bay full of

sediment.

Over the years persistence -- and a lot of dredging -- has been

required to keep Newport Bay from disappearing.

At 1,000 acres, Newport Bay is the largest tidal wetland in

Southern California and is home to a variety of plants and animals,

some of which are endangered. Local water-quality organizations,

environmentalists and elected officials have fought to protect the

bay and its inhabitants.

A major sediment dredging project for the Upper Newport Bay should

help. Planning is underway with work expected to begin in 2005.

This should not to be confused with dredging in the lower bay,

which was done in September. Further, neither of those is to be

confused with the removal of vegetation and sediment from San Diego

Creek, which is now underway.

All this dredging can be perplexing as well as costly, but it’s

all necessary, say local officials involved with the projects.

SAN DIEGO CREEK

Orange County Public Facilities and Resources Department is

clearing vegetation and sediment from a 2.5-mile segment of San Diego

Creek, which was designed as a flood control channel into the bay.

The stretch of waterway became an animal habitat over the years and

now also serves as a place to trap sediment carried by runoff from

nearby developments.

County employees say the clearing project is needed now because

the creek has become overgrown and clogged, which creates a risk of

flooding that could interfere with a nearby water reclamation plant.

If the plant got flooded, raw sewage could be released into the bay,

county officials said.

Environmental activists have questioned the project because the

county, in December, pushed to handle it as an emergency instead of

going through the long process of applying for permits and taking

public comment. Rushing through the work could damage animal habitat,

activists said.

The creek contains basins that trap sediment before it reaches the

bay, but to work well they need to be regularly maintained. That’s

part of what the clearing project will do, said Susan Brodeur, a

coastal engineer for Orange County’s Public Facilities and Resources

Department.

Despite the basins, San Diego Creek is the major contributor of

sediment into the bay. There’s no way to stop all sediment from

getting through. “It’s much easier to clean [out] when it’s in the

creek, than when it’s in the bay,” Newport Beach Assistant City

Manager Dave Kiff said.

UPPER NEWPORT BAY

Dredging is not a permanent answer, but it usually lasts longer

than the last project done in the Upper Newport Bay in 1998.

That project took about a year, but it didn’t do enough. Only part

of the dredging needed was actually done because there wasn’t enough

money for a major project, Kiff said.

“Even as that one was underway we were planning for the next one

We tried to do what we could with the money we had available,” he

said.

And so the $38-million dredging project, headed by the Army Corps

of Engineers, will dredge 2.1-million cubic yards of sediment and

deposit it at an offshore disposal site about five miles from the

Newport Pier.

Two basins and several channels in the upper bay will be dredged

and deepened, adding about 42 acres of open water and an island where

least terns will be relocated. The project also includes planting

eelgrass beds.

Once the project is done, dredging won’t be needed again in the

upper bay for about 20 years, said Donald Spencer, former project

manager.

LOWER NEWPORT BAY

In the fall, dredging was done in the Lower Newport Bay where some

sediment flows in from the Upper Newport Bay.

Sediment in the lower portion of the bay causes boats to run

aground. Dock owners want to get dredging done so their docks remain

usable, but all sorts of regulations bog the process down, said

Seymour Beek, a member of Newport Beach’s harbor commission.

Dredging has all but stopped, Beek said. “It’s very difficult to

get a permit now.”

Since the early 1990s, Coastal Commission regulations have

prohibited any work in the bay that destroys eelgrass, but the

protected plant is everywhere now, he said.

Because regulations require property owners to hire a diver to map

the eelgrass and then replace any they remove, a dredging project can

cost three times as much as it used to, Beek said.

The $1-million sediment removal project done by the Army Corps of

Engineers in September was only about 15% of what is needed in the

lower bay, Beek said.

The outlook for lower bay dredging, however, is good, he said.

Newport Beach officials have been talking with U.S. Rep. Chris Cox

about establishing new standards for how much eelgrass should be left

untouched, and the city may create beds where property owners can

plant more eelgrass when they remove some during dredging.

“I’d like to see sanity return to the whole situation and I think

maybe we’re headed that way,” Beek said.

ONGOING NEED

The impending upper bay dredging is expected to be sufficient for

about 20 years, barring a major storm or natural disaster, but bay

experts said there will always be a periodic need for dredging.

“The bottom line is if we don’t continue on a long-term dredging

project, we don’t have an Upper Newport Bay,” said Garry Brown,

executive director of Orange County CoastKeeper, a coastal protection

agency that has helped find funds for dredging projects.

Without dredging, Brown said, the bay waters won’t perform their

natural flushing process and the existing habitats will die.

“Basically dredging is the lifeblood of the ongoing health of the

Upper Newport Bay,” Brown said.

But one of the ongoing challenges is securing money for dredging.

Officials have been trying to get the upper bay project going

since at least 2000. The final grant needed came in from the

California Coastal Conservancy in December.

Since 1998, Cox has obtained about $3.3 million in federal dollars

for Newport Bay projects, and in 2000 he secured about $32.4 million

in future spending on the upper bay from state and federal sources,

Cox spokesman Kate Whitman said.

“My problem with this is, we go around begging for money to

restore this resource after it has been compromised by upstream

pollutants,” environmentalist Bob Caustin said. “This dredging should

be funded by those that are sending their material downstream.”

If developers had to pay for the runoff their projects cause,

they’d probably be more proactive when designing those projects, he

said.

In the long run, officials said they’d like to see the need for

dredging kept to a minimum.

“Ultimately our goal would be to minimize the frequency of

dredging because it is intrusive on both the habitat and the

population,” Kiff said.

“Our goal overall would be to get the bay to a state where it

maximizes its habitat value.”

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

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

alicia.robinson@latimes.com.