Group hopes to change Rhine

Alicia Robinson

Environmentalists want to clean up the Rhine Channel once and for

all, but first they have to find out what’s in it.

Orange County CoastKeeper, a Newport Beach-based nonprofit

environmental group, is poised to begin a $346,000, in-depth study of

the Rhine Channel in August. It will be the most ambitious approach

ever taken to an area that in 1998 was designated one of Orange

County’s hot spots for toxic sediment, the group’s officials said.

“It is the most intensive monitoring that’s ever been done in that

channel,” said Randy Seton, Orange County CoastKeeper program

director. “We’re going to go deeper, and look for more than anybody’s

ever looked.”

The channel is in a historically industrial part of Lower Newport

Bay, which was once home to a fish cannery and is still the site of

several boat yards. Over the years, anything from old paint cans to

sunken boats has ended up in the channel, and at one point a

transformer accident spilled polychlorinated biphenyls, commonly

called PCB, into the water there, group officials said.

A 1998 report from the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control

Board deemed the Rhine Channel a high cleanup priority because of its

toxic sediment.

When data collection for the study begins in August, researchers

will map the area and then use sonar and take deep core samples to

find out how far down the sediment is polluted, something that hasn’t

been done before. The research also will look at how the pollution

can be cleaned up and answer what is likely a multimillion dollar

question: How much will the cleanup cost?

Seton said in the past anyone who wanted to rid the channel of

environmental hazards shied away when they saw the price tag. The

1998 study estimated cleanup at close to $10.6 million, and other

estimates have been much higher.

“I’ve heard numbers as high as $20 million to do a removal or

cleanup,” said Newport Beach Harbor Resources Manager Tom Rossmiller,

who is working with CoastKeeper on the study. “Cost will certainly be

a huge factor.”

The city kicked in $68,000 toward the study, and the rest is

state-funded. Officials expect to apply for state and federal funds

to pay for a cleanup project. Despite the fluctuating estimates,

CoastKeeper Executive Director Garry Brown said the cleanup could be

cheaper than previously thought because of new technologies that

don’t require wholesale dredging and removal of sediment.

One of the people most excited to see the study get underway is

Jack Skinner, a Newport Beach internal medicine specialist who has

followed water-quality issues for the past 20 years.

In April, the Orange County Health Care Agency warned that some

fish in the Newport Bay shouldn’t be eaten because they contain

pollutants including PCB. Skinner said cleaning up the Rhine Channel

could help solve the problem of contaminated fish.

“Clearly, it’s known that fish move in and out of that channel and

probably feed on bottom-dwelling organisms that contain toxic

chemicals,” he said. “This is the only way I can see of really

reducing that contamination.”

The project brings to fruition a wish CoastKeeper members have had

since they founded the organization more than five years ago. They

held their 1999 kickoff event near the Rhine Channel with divers

bringing up debris from underwater.

“We kind of made a commitment to the community then that as one of

our goals we’d do what it took, however long it took, to get the

Rhine Channel cleaned up,” Brown said.

The study will be launched in August with a public event featuring

state Environmental Protection Agency head Terry Tamminen, and

results are expected by April 2005. The date for the public event has

yet to be announced.

* 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.