It’s unfortunate that the city council recently threw a monkey wrench into our harbor dredging plan. Whether intentional or not, they voted 6-1 (Duffield voting no) to slow down and potentially kill our harbor dredging project.
I grew up on the harbor and have a business on the bay. I’ve seen the results of benign neglect of the harbor. The main channel hasn’t been dredged since 1936. Charter boats can’t use it at low tide. Large boats have to wait offshore for high tide. Residential docks can’t be dredged due to the cost of trucking the material to distant landfills.
The City’s dredging plan solves both problems. It buries and caps the dredge material in a deep sub-marine pit between Lido and Bay Islands. It’s a safe solution used in Long Beach, Port Hueneme, Humboldt Bay, Boston Harbor, Baltimore Harbor, New Bedford and Chesapeake Bay.
The federal, state and local agencies are on board. We’ve received nearly $16 million from Washington DC to pay for it.
An alternative plan has been proposed by some Lido Island residents that dumps the dredge material at Lower Castaways parking lot at PCH and Dover. The parking lot can’t accommodate all the material, so they propose dumping the remainder on the face of the Castaways cliff and the uplands park near the Veterans Memorial flag and statue. They propose to encapsulate the dredge material with a concrete cap.
The city council’s recent action calls for a “Third Party Review” of both plans that evaluates the city approved plan of burying the dredge material under 20 feet of water in a deep hole capped by four feet of dirt versus dumping it all at Lower Castaways and Castaways Park.
This “Third Party Review” is a waste of time and jeopardizes our federal funding by delaying the project.
Here’s an excellent explanation of the approved project by Councilman Duffield.
Gary Hill
Newport Beach
This letter to the editor first appeared in Stu News Report.
The Newport Harbor Underwater Cleanup, in partnership with the City of Newport Beach, has announced the 4th Annual Newport Harbor Underwater Cleanup scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 21 at Marina Park in Newport Beach.
Launched in 2017 by Help Your Harbor’s founders—former Newport Beach mayor Marshall “Duffy” Duffield and local environmentalists Billy Dutton and Mark Ward — NHUC hosted three years of sold-out cleanup events at the Balboa Bay Club before being put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re thrilled to expand this year’s event at our new location,” says Billy Dutton, co-founder of NHUC and Help Your Harbor. “The Newport Marina Park site allows for much greater community participation, with volunteers helping to clean up our harbor both above and below the water. The addition of the International Coastal Cleanup Day celebration at Marina Park that afternoon will bring together over two dozen organizations and their volunteers, all committed to protecting our precious marine environment.”
After years of advocacy and enforcement actions, we are excited to see the Corps’ dredging project proceed with an improved design that better considers the health of Southern California’s coastal ecosystem,” said Garry Brown, founder and president of Orange County Coastkeeper. “The new plan for the dredged material is a big win for our waters and helps lower costs. Rather than burying contaminated sediment underneath Newport’s turning basin in a poorly designed disposal facility, the material will be repurposed and contained in an expansion project at the Port of Long Beach.
On August 1, the Newport Aquatic Center welcomed Beyond Blindness, a nonprofit in Santa Ana providing support for visually impaired children and their families, to their facility as part of Beyond Blindness’ inclusive summer camp, taking the campers on outriggers in the Back Bay.
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