Transplantation operation

Alicia Robinson

Newport Beach is a city on the move in the world of eelgrass, which

dock owners have long considered the bane of their existence.

The underwater plant, plentiful under many docks in Newport

Harbor, is an important habitat for marine life and is protected by

state and federal policies. Dock owners wanting to dredge their boat

slips can’t remove eelgrass without spending thousands of dollars to

have it replaced elsewhere, and that mitigation can raise the cost of

a $2,000 dredging project to more than $30,000.

A seven-week pilot project now underway will provide Newport Beach

with its own eelgrass mitigation site, allowing harbor users to

remove the grass and dredge without fear.

“It’s a real controversial issue here in the harbor,” Harbor

Resources Manager Tom Rossmiller said. “We think by the city managing

the mitigation, we can cut the cost to the homeowner to a more

reasonable level.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is heading the cooperative

project with the city. Divers with Orange County CoastKeeper are

pulling up eelgrass at several “donor sites,” and workers from the

nonprofit Orange County Conservation Corps are putting the grass in

bundles to be replanted at seven transplant sites around the Balboa

Peninsula, Lido Isle and the Upper Newport Bay.

After seeing how well the transplanting works, the city plans to

maintain a mitigation site with a baseline amount of eelgrass. As

long as the grass is more plentiful than the baseline, homeowners

could remove small amounts of eelgrass as needed, and for larger

projects the city would sell mitigation credits to those who need to

dredge.

That’s in the future. At present, the city is about halfway

through the pilot project, and workers spend several days a week

moving the eelgrass from one part of the bay to another.

It’s wet and muddy work, but it’s educational too, said Cassandra

Clemens, 17, of Fullerton. She and the other Orange County

Conservation Corps workers find marine life every day in the buckets

of eelgrass -- jellyfish, octopi, mussels, even tiny crabs smaller

than a thumbnail.

“We’re learning while we’re working, so I think that’s pretty cool

too,” she said. “This is, I think, the funnest work that I’ve ever

done at a job.”

Through the conservation corps, young workers like Clemens can

write about what they’re doing and get credit toward their high

school diplomas.

The eelgrass project will be rolled into a more comprehensive plan

the city is developing to manage the harbor’s resources while

protecting its public uses, Rossmiller said.

Officials’ growing eelgrass savvy, and the plant’s apparent

overabundance in some parts of Newport Beach, are signs of a

comeback. When the grass first became protected in 1991, there were only about three acres of it in Newport Bay, Rossmiller said.

A just-completed survey shows eelgrass now covers about 150 acres,

or 20% of the 750-acre bay. Thanks to dry weather and water-quality

improvements, that’s a trend all along the coast, said Rick Ware, a

marine biologist with Coastal Resources Management, a consulting firm

overseeing the Newport Beach project.

“Between 1993 and now, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of natural

regrowth of eelgrass in the bay,” he said.

City officials hope to have their eelgrass-mitigation plans

approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the California

Coastal Commission by fall 2005. For more information visit

https://www. newport-beach.ca.us/HBR online.

* 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.