Sand-plan opponents again jam chambers

Deirdre Newman and Alicia Robinson

For the second time in less than a week, residents packed the City

Council chambers to protest a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project

that would transplant sand from the Santa Ana River to West Newport,

widening the beach by more than 200 feet in places.

As of press time, council members hadn’t voted whether to hire a

coastal engineering expert to monitor any work done on the city’s

beaches or whether to send a letter to the corps urging offshore

disposal of sediment from the river instead of spreading it on the

beach.

A contractor hired by the Corps of Engineers already has begun

removing vegetation from the river near Adams Avenue as part of the

flood-prevention project, which will later entail dredging 400,000

cubic yards of sediment from the river channel.

The city agreed to take sand from the dredging project to

replenish the beach between 32nd and 56th streets in West Newport.

But residents have complained that the river sand could contain trash

and pollutants and that widening the beach will ruin wave patterns

and create dangerous new ones.

“It will create a shore break like the waves in Balboa,” avid

surfer Greg Ozimec said Tuesday. “It will be unsurfable. The beach

will be too steep.”

Another point of contention has been an environmental study the

corps performed for the project several years ago. That study assumed

a maximum beach width of 350 feet, and the project specifications now

show much wider stretches.

A requirement the council considered Tuesday was that the

contractor’s permit to work on the beach, issued by the city, must

adhere to a maximum beach width of 350 feet. Work is scheduled to

begin on the beach after Labor Day.

Meanwhile, city officials have been meeting with the Corps of

Engineers and officials from Orange County, which is paying for a

small percentage of the $4.5-million project to figure out how to get

the sand deposited offshore. Some of it would still be washed back in

to replenish the beach, which residents prefer.

The corps is bound by a contract with CJW, a contractor already

hired and working on the project upstream. Corps project manager Ken

Morris estimated last week that offshore disposal could cost at least

$1.5 million more than the beach-disposal method.

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers government. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221.