While reading Jo Carol Hunter's letter to the editor over my oatmeal,
I am compelled to respectfully respond to some of Hunter's statements
that imply that Upper Newport Bay is not worth the attention and
funding it gets (she calls the bay a "boondoggle"). Let me offer the
following thoughts:
Silt removal from the bay is mandated by federal law. The court's
interpretation of the Clean Water Act requires us to keep sediment
out of the Bay and to remove it once it's there. When you drive
University Drive, near UC Irvine, you go past sediment catch basins
that the city funds (along with upstream cities) on an ongoing basis.
Those basins trap and remove upstream sediment before the sediment
gets into the Upper Bay. The city spends about $70,000 a year to do
this. The proposed Newport Bay Ecosystem Restoration Project (the
"Big Dredge") is intended to occur just once every 21 years. This
project is also a federal mandate -- in large part because of Defend
the Bay's lawsuits against the United States Environmental Protection
Agency in the mid-1990s.
Contrary to Hunter's assertion, we don't dredge every year. Nor do
we spend "millions year, after year, after year." We don't dredge
even every five or 10 years. The Ecosystem Restoration Project's
scope is unprecedented -- it's never been done before. The last major
dredging project was only one-third the size and cost, and it wasn't
intended, as this one is, to fully restore the Upper Bay to its
optimal ecosystem.
We have made some major strides in working with upstream
communities such as Irvine, Costa Mesa, Santa Ana, Tustin and Lake
Forest, to stop sediment transport and the trash that comes down the
watershed with each "first flush" of a major rain event. Hunter
should see the great work that Lake Forest has done in Serrano Creek
(a Back Bay tributary) to protect the creek's slopes from sediment
loss. It's truly remarkable to see the kind of community support that
the Serrano Creek Project has received. Further, each city is subject
to new and stringent trash removal requirements from streets, curbs
and catch basins. We have a ways to go, but the cities have made a
good start.
Next, Hunter falls into a trap that I think many people fall into,
and it's unfair. There is a smell to the Upper Newport Bay at low
tide -- it's a strong smell, but it comes from the very natural
decomposition of all of the bay's biology. If humans weren't here, it
would smell just as strongly. The Back Bay's smell is not due to
