Canal in eerie need of dredging, some say

Deirdre Newman

A group of Newport Shores homeowners want a canal near their homes

dredged to get rid of the sediment they say is damaging the water

quality and health of the marshlands.

But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the channel, says

its first priority is dredging the Santa Ana River. And funding is

hard to come by for other projects, project manager Ken Morris said.

The corps is dredging 400,000 cubic yards of sediment from the

Santa Ana River channel and plans to dispose of it in West Newport

Beach. Plans call for placing it on the beach, but West Newport

residents are fighting that plan and asking that it be dropped

offshore.

The Newport Shores group says it makes sense for the corps to

dredge the canal for the same reason it’s dredging the river: to

remove silt and sediment it has been dumping into the river because

of its work on the Prado Dam project, said Everette Phillips, who

lives on Canal Street.

The corps plans to dredge the canal at some point in the future,

Morris said.

“No. 1, we need to dredge out the channel before we dredge out the

marsh, because we feel that some of the sediment going into the marsh

is maybe going out of the channel,” Morris said. “Secondly ... our

funding is in very short supply right now, and we kind of have to

reach and grab for all the funding we can get.”

The Newport Shores group started pushing for dredging in 2002,

when the corps announced plans to remove sand and sediment from the

Santa Ana River and deposit it in West Newport. They feel the entire

canal should be dredged, not just the part near some of their homes,

they said.

Their children swim and boat in the channel, and they are

concerned about high levels of bacteria, because the canal gets such

little tidal flow and doesn’t experience a flushing effect because of

all the silt and sediment in it, they say.

“Where else are [kids] going to play in West Newport?” Phillips

said. “We have no tennis courts, no baseball and soccer fields.”

Although the corps didn’t include the canal in its dredging

project two years ago, Newport Shores residents hoped it would

consider adding the canal to the project now since it was asked to

change its plans and deposit sand offshore in West Newport by the

Newport Beach City Council. Last week, the council approved issuing a

permit to the corps, allowing it to work in the beach area but

prohibiting it from spreading sand directly on the beach.

The only area of the channel the corps is including in the project

is also a concern to homeowners. The corps will spread 20,000 cubic

yards of the sand it takes from the river on an island to enhance the

habitat of the least tern, an endangered bird species. The homeowners

are concerned the sand will run off into the channel, making water

quality worse.

“I see it as potentially more silt, which is what we’re trying to

get rid of,” said Kennie Jo Rizzo, who lives on 62nd Street.

Frustrated by the lack of dredging, homeowners are banding

together to form a canal committee to get a comprehensive plan for

dredging and maintenance of the canal on a regular basis.

The canal was last dredged when built in the early 1990s, Morris

said. One of the challenges for the group is that the canal area is

divided between multiple legislative districts on the state and

federal levels.

“I think we’ve been pushed aside for all these years, and that’s

why it’s so bad,” Canal Street resident Mary Ayres said.

The Orange County Health Care Agency, which collects samples every

week from two spots along the channel, found the bacterial level

varies, said Monica Mazur, supervising environmental health

specialist.

“At times, it is over the state standards for swimming in ocean

waters, so we put a posting up, and other times, it’s fine and we

don’t,” Mazur said. “It’s a very, very small watershed, and you’re

looking at a little irrigation runoff and possibly some duck

[droppings] in there.”

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

574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.