Conservationists honor two locals

Andrew Edwards

For more than two decades, Newport Beach environmentalists Jack and

Nancy Skinner have worked together to keep local waters clean, but

their love of the bay goes back even longer.

“I became very interested in Newport Bay because we met down here

before we were married 50 years ago,” Jack Skinner, 73, said. “We met

at Little Corona.”

The Orange County League of Conservation Voters named the Skinners

recipients of the group’s 2005 Environmental Activist of the Year

Award. The couple are to receive the honor at a banquet in May.

The league is a political group that evaluates local candidates

based on their positions on environmental issues. Officers of the

group could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Nancy Skinner, 70, said that when she received a phone call from

the league letting her know that she and her husband won the award,

she was told it was given to honor their full 22 years of activism.

The couple’s environmental activities have centered around water

quality issues since 1983. Jack Skinner, then a Hoag Hospital

physician, read an environmental study that detailed illnesses

suffered by people swimming near New York City.

“This got Nancy and myself both involved because of coming out of

a medical background and being interested in swimming,” Jack Skinner

said.

At the time, the Skinners’ advocacy focused on promoting the value

of fully treating sewage before wastewater is discharged into the

ocean. Jack Skinner hit the books to get data on the issue, and Nancy

Skinner attended meetings from San Diego to Santa Barbara to speak on

water matters.

Around 1986, the couple became interested in algae that had

infested the bay. The Skinners hiked along the route of runoff that

traveled to the bay to collect water samples. A major factor in the

algae growth was fertilizer from nurseries in Irvine.

The Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Board currently regulates

runoff from nurseries, Jack Skinner said.

Nancy Gardner, chair of the Newport Beach chapter of the Surfrider

Foundation, a water quality watchdog group, credited the Skinners

with having a major impact on reducing pollution in the bay.

“It was one the things where we could say the water quality in the

bay was better than it was a few years ago,” Gardner said.

Currently, Jack Skinner is a member of an advisory committee that

is looking at a proposed study for the Santa Ana Regional Water

Quality Board that would examine bacteria in Newport Bay.

The couple have made water quality a family tradition. Their

daughter Susan Skinner-Caustin and her husband Defend the Bay founder

Bob Caustin have both been active in environmental causes.

Caustin said Jack Skinner was the catalyst who sparked his

interest in water issues.

“He’s an incredible wealth of information,” Caustin said.

The Skinners’ interest in water isn’t limited to reading

bacteriological studies and commenting on draft environmental impact

reports. The couple remain avid body surfers.

“He does the big waves, and I do the little waves,” Nancy Skinner

said. “We go the beach every day in the summertime.”

* ANDREW EDWARDS covers business and the environment. He can be

reached at (714) 966-4624 or by e-mail at andrew.edwards

@latimes.com.