SOUNDING OFF: Lagunans should have a say in dumped sediment

Newport Beach sediment is being dumped off the coast of Laguna Beach.

I know that the local papers have run stories on this and that the city has this issue listed as an agenda item but I feel Laguna Beach residents need to know about this and be encouraged to express their opinions to the papers, Laguna Beach City Council, the county, the Environmental Protection Agency and even the state.

As I understand it, the contaminated sediment from Newport Back Bay is taken four miles due west off Emerald Bay. This dump site is a new location and prior to the site being approved, federal law states many public meetings are to be held for which, “any potentially interested parties” must be notified. It was identified in ALL documents as a Newport Back Bay eco-restoration.

The EPA alleges they initially sent notification e-mails out to a list provided to them by the County of Orange. Portraying it as a Newport project, it’s no wonder that anyone in Laguna receiving such an invite would assume it had no potential adverse impact upon us.

Also mandated are that notices shall be sent to local papers “” EPA claims it sent copies to the LA Times and OC Business Journal, so none of our three weeklies nor OC Register were notified.

Dumping straight out from us, but NOT notified in a fashion that reflected its true potential impact upon us! Roger Butow of Clean Water Now! has been digging deep and has found that the supposed master notification list, provided by the EPA Nov. 2, had numerous errors, omissions and deficiencies.

The sediment is mainly mud, clay and coarse sand but a lengthy and costly Environmental Impact Assessment was carried out and shows that it also contains mercury, arsenic, PCBs, DDT, cadmium, lead, dieldrin, etc. Maybe the amounts of these contaminants are small individually.

However, the cumulative amount of polluted sediment allowed to be dumped at this new location off of Laguna Beach is 2.5 million cubic yards per year.

Now the permanent site for Orange County, we’ll be getting that amount indefinitely, so the Newport Beach detritus is just the beginning. We will have Huntington Harbor coming down and Dana Point Harbor dredged sediment being brought up the coast.

The predominate wind direction and surface water movement would wash this yummy soup onto our beaches. Even if the amount of contaminates are small I would prefer not to be swimming in them. However, I’m anxious about how insignificant the accumulation of these contaminates is. Newport officials were so alarmed about the pollutants washing in there that they supported this new site some 1.5 miles farther from their city limits.

Something has to be done with this stuff, but I would like it to be farther away from me; after all, it is not our nasty stuff and we did not have the opportunity to speak up against it. It would be great if the contaminants could be removed or reduced before it is dumped at sea. If this is not possible then it should be dumped farther offshore so it sinks to the bottom before it washes onto shore.

If any residents of Laguna Beach feel we have been kept in the dark over this matter and are unhappy or even outraged about this dump site, please make your feelings known to the papers and our elected officials.

MAX ISLES lives in Laguna Beach.