Groups demand pollution reduction

Alicia Robinson

Two environmental groups on Monday demanded the Santa Ana Regional

Water Quality Control Board reduce pollutants in San Diego Creek and

Newport Harbor, following a warning last week that fish from the

harbor may be contaminated.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and Newport Beach-based

Defend the Bay sent a letter to water board executive officer Gerard

Thibault urging the board to take formal action on a plan by July 30.

“This is a formal demand and we expect to be entering negotiations

with them and have implementation take place,” said Bob Caustin,

founding director of Defend the Bay. “There are legal rights if it

does not happen.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set standards on the

total maximum daily loads, or allowable amounts, of toxic pollutants

in Newport Harbor and the Back Bay in 2002, but the water board has

not decided how it will enforce those limits, Caustin said.

On Thursday the Orange County Health Care Agency warned the public

that five species of fish from Newport Harbor and the Back Bay may

contain two types of lingering pollutants. One of those species, the

California corbina, already was the subject of a health advisory from

the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

The board has the right to stop all discharges of toxins into the

waters, but instead it has launched several studies, avoiding

enforcement that would likely be unpopular with agencies that

discharge water into the harbor and bay, Caustin said.

“It’s cheaper to fund a study and postpone the inevitable,” he

said.

But a water board official said the board is working on having a

plan to reduce pollutants ready by December 2005. The board is now

gathering information needed to develop a plan, and the studies it

has done are a part of that process, said Michael Adackapara,

division chief of the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board.

“I think when we develop a plan it has to be based on some sound

science and we are looking for the scientific basis for the plan,” he

said.

The studies are looking for the sources of the pollutants and how

they are getting into the bay, Adackapara said. Some data on mussels

has shown the amount of pollutants in them has decreased, he said,

but he wasn’t sure over what time period the reduction occurred.

“What the study [of Newport Harbor fish] is indicating, I think,

is what we have known for some time, [that] there’s danger in eating

the fish,” he said.

Adackapara said he expects the board to work with the

environmental groups on the plan. Once a draft plan is created,

public workshops will be held, and a final plan must be approved by

the EPA and the State Water Quality Control Board, he said.

The environmental groups have requested a response from the water

board by April 21.

“It’s pathetic,” Caustin said. “You can’t catch a fish and eat it

without worrying about toxics. We’re not a Third World country. This

is Orange County, Calif.”

* 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.