MAILBAG:

I guess I’m not clear as to what constitutes an emergency.

If your boat’s sinking, or you’re bleeding from an artery, that’s an emergency. But emergency dredging? I’ll have to think about that for a second.

OK, maybe if one of the big dump barges accidentally dropped its load in the middle of Newport Harbor, for sure that would call for some quick dredging. But let’s not get carried away with the Newport Beach Harbor Commission’s enthusiasm to call for “emergency dredging” of the lower bay. Let’s think this through.

The last thorough dredging Newport got was back in the 1930s. Since then, the harbor has been ever so slowly silting in. And it’s time now to start looking at rational ways to go about doing it again (70 years on anything isn’t too bad).

I own a boat with a 6-foot draft, and I can think of only a few places where the keel would drag if I were to go there at a minus tide. Most are near Linda Isle, and many of those areas are “private” channels, meaning the property owners will likely be responsible for the dredging. I hear the Newport Harbor Yacht Club has some problem areas, too.

And while the bay is slowly getting shallower, there’s another process at work. The boats are getting bigger, and they draw more water. One new owner will soon be parking a 150-footer in front of his house. Others prefer big, deep keel racing sailboats.

Some of these folks do have a problem, but for them, there’s always a high tide just a few hours away. But is it an emergency? I prefer to think of it as “siltation meets gentrification.”

I agree with the sentiment that Newport should be asking the folks upstream for help. Most of what’s in the bay came from the watershed. But realistically, do you think the taxpayers of Tustin and Irvine will willingly chip in to keep the racers’ keels from dragging?

And that can probably explain why Newport has had such a hard time getting the Corps of Engineers to pony up. They’ve got bigger problems, like New Orleans and the Mississippi River dikes.

So, what’s the city to do? Well, they’ll likely wind up paying for it itself. And maybe they should. Why? Because Newport derives enormous financial benefit from the harbor. The city accountants will say otherwise, but they are misguided. It has to do with a lot of expenses going to the Tidelands Fund, but a lot more of the harbor revenues going to the General Fund.

It’s an accounting anomaly that I won’t go into here, except to offer one example.

Most boat owners pay an “unsecured property” tax to the county. As recently as 2007, the county collected more than $15 million in unsecured tax from property located in Newport. That’s far more than it collects from any county city, and it’s because of the 9,000 boats in Newport’s harbor.

The county shares the loot with the city at the rate of 16.6%, so the city gets back more than $2 million, most of it directly attributable to the boats. But that money disappears into the General Fund, along with other tax revenues.

By now you probably see where I’m headed with this. If Newport collects around $2 million a year from the boats, and Newport needs to dredge the harbor for the boats, then why not put some of that boat tax money toward the dredging. At the dredging’s estimated $15 million, why, it wouldn’t take more than 10 years’ worth of boater’s money to pay for it.

And don’t forget that Newport has been collecting, and will be collecting, that money for decades. Considering that the city got 70 years out of the last dredging, it’s not unreasonable to ask them to divert 10 years or so of General Fund boat-tax revenue from whatever they’ve been spending it on.

Now that we’ve discovered a funding source that won’t dry up any time soon, let’s get back to the original question: Should this be handled as an emergency? People handling emergencies are often called on to make quick, best guesstimate decisions.

Dredging the harbor calls for no such action. It demands a slow, well-thought-out plan. For example, one line of reasoning for the emergency declaration is to save re-mobilization costs of $500,000 should the dredge in Back Bay finish up and leave. True, dredge mobilization costs are high. But the more rational approach would be to ask if the dredge in Back Bay is the correct piece of equipment for the job. And would it be the most cost effective with or without additional mobilization costs?

If the contract for dredging the lower bay were put out to bid today, there could quite possibly be a company that would submit a lower bid than the present company.

A larger, more efficient dredge could cut costs by taking less time to work. The dredge in Back Bay has been there for years. And while it has performed admirably, the question is how many people in the lower harbor want a dredge outside their homes for weeks or months. A larger dredge that will get in and out more quickly might make this work ultimately less disruptive and less costly.

So let’s think this through. The dredging needs to be done, but done rationally. Is it an emergency? Well, as John Wayne would say, “Not hardly.”

MARK SITES

Marine contractor, Newport Beach