Upper Bay cleaning nears final stage

A $13.8-million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to finish cleaning Upper Newport Bay is slated to begin later this month, federal officials announced this week.

“It’s good to see government agencies working together to complete a major civil works project,” said Newport Beach Councilwoman Leslie Daigle, who has been involved with lobbying for federal funds to complete dredging in Upper Newport Bay.

The cleanup project will help improve the natural habitat for some species of endangered birds that nest in the Upper Bay, said Greg Fuderer, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Upper Newport Bay provides a habitat for at least two endangered species of birds, the California least tern and the Belding’s Savannah sparrow.

The project will include clearing out vegetation on islands in the Upper Bay, making them more inviting places for the birds to nest, Fuderer said. Channels around the islands also will be carved out, making nesting birds less vulnerable to predators like cats, Fuderer said.

Two basins in the Upper Bay also will be excavated to filter out sediment that washes down from runoff across Orange County.

The dredging project is slated to wrap up in mid-October 2010. Environmental experts will monitor the Upper Bay for two years after the dredging is done to measure water-quality levels.

Funding for the project will come from a roughly $787-billion economic stimulus package Congress passed in February at President Obama’s urging of.

“The big stimulus bill freed up funds for a variety of shovel-ready project like this one, which was high on the priority list,” Fuderer said.

A $13.8-million contract the corps awarded last week to an Alameda-based company to do the dredging will create 18 jobs as part of the stimulus package, Fuderer said.

The dredging project, which has been underway since 2006, had struggled to gain enough funding to continue work in the Upper Bay.

Newport Beach is still trying to secure federal funding to dredge the Lower Bay, which includes Newport Harbor.

Newport Harbor hasn’t been thoroughly dredged since the 1930s, and boaters often complain of running aground. Cleaning the harbor falls under federal jurisdiction, but the project is low on the list of priorities because government officials view the site as a pleasure harbor, not a working waterway.

Congress is set to approve $1.6 million later this year for preliminary water-testing studies in Newport Harbor. The tests would put the harbor cleanup project in good position to obtain more federal funding to begin dredging next fiscal year.

“Restoring the [Upper Newport Bay] ecosystem for environmental quality and aquatic purposes is a long-held goal of the city,” Daigle said. “We can now shift our momentum to the dredging of the Lower Bay. I am optimistic that we will be able to achieve that long-held goal.”