Dredging

The federal government injected about $1.75 million in additional funding for the dredging of Newport Harbor, Councilman Mike Henn announced Tuesday. The city's roughly $7.8-million project would bring the pleasure harbor closer to its original depths, but funding obstacles and regulatory approvals have held up the process . "That's a tremendous advance here," said Henn, who had planned to raise some of the funds from private parties interested in the harbor. Henn asked City Manager Dave Kiff to consider making up the remaining $250,000, which would increase the city's contribution from $2.5 million to about $2.75 million.

The latest phase of Newport Beach's harbor dredging is underway, with giant vessels removing thousands of yards of toxic sediment from Lido Isle. The sediment will be sent the Port of Long Beach for disposal in time to meet a June 30 deadline. The $6.5-million undertaking launched May 2 and will focus on the Lower Bay. Sediment off West Coast Highway, the south side of Lido, the north side of Balboa Island and an area near the Coast Guard station will be hauled away. Long Beach will use the dirt as fill to help expand its port.

A San Diego-based engineering contractor will begin dredging in the Newport Harbor in late April, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Friday. R.E. Staite Engineering, the low bidder for the project, was awarded the $6.3-million contract, said Greg Fuderer, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles Division. An exact start date had not been selected as of Friday. "The city is excited to start this dredging project after nearly 10 years of planning," Harbor Resources Manager Chris Miller wrote in an email.

Deepa Bharath The notorious El Nino storms four years ago did more damage to local bays and marinas than meets the eye, apparently. Plazi Miller, vice president of Shellmaker Inc., said his company has been hired to dig out a portion of several hundred tons of sediment that washed over from the upper bay into the channels after the storms. "It's causing a lot of problems," he said. "During a low tide, boats can't get in and out of the marina."

MIKE WHITEHEAD Ahoy. Well, I'm off again cruising on the high seas this week, but don't worry, I will be back just in time for my Sunday radio show. I am on two different voyages. On one, I will be aboard with someone whom most of you in Newport Harbor will remember -- Marty Kasules. Remember Marty? He was the Newport harbormaster, and he retired this year to set sail on his Uniflite motor yacht. Well, he planned to join the Baha HaHa cruisers, but instead, Kasules is putting his yacht on a Dockwise transport ship.

Sail straight and sail fast. With the Fourth of July quickly approaching, harbor use appears to be at an all-time high. Junior sailing has begun with Lido Isle and Newport Harbor Yacht Clubs having to adjust their racing areas because of the dredging. The larger dredge, Palomar, was still working at the east end of Lido and the smaller dredge, 180, was in front of the Lido Isle Yacht Club. While watching the dredging in front of Lido Isle, the cynic in me pictured a sabot mistakenly being picked up out of the water and placed on the barge.

With one deadline missed, Newport Beach officials now have until June to get the next phase of the city's harbor dredging project underway. Material scooped from areas near the south side of Lido Isle, the north side of Balboa Island, West Coast Highway, the Coast Guard Station and other areas was to be transported for disposal to the Port of Long Beach by March 14. However, that deadline was missed due to complications, Harbor Resources Manager...

The California Coastal Commission on Wednesday approved Newport Beach's Rhine Channel restoration project. The commissioners gave the go-ahead to dredge 150,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment from the waterway near Cannery Village and dump it at the Port of Long Beach . The approval is the latest step in the process to clean up waste from shipyards, canneries, boat-building and metal plating facilities that operated there for...

Homeowners along Newport Harbor will have to contend with the noise and lights of dredging crews working around the clock over the next two months, city officials said. Newport Beach's harbor resources manager, Chris Miller, told the City Council on Tuesday that dredging crews wouldn't need to work every night, just nights when tides were high enough. The crews have to finish their work by June 30, when they lose the chance to dump the dredged soil for new use at the Port of Long Beach, he said.

What an amazing month in Newport Beach! The Board of Supervisors approved the memorandum of understanding with the city, Stop Polluting Our Newport (SPON) and the Airport Working Group, moving forward with airport curfew protections for an additional 15 years, all the way to 2035. This will appreciably protect our quality of life. Thank you, Supervisor John Moorlach, for your support and leadership. More than 2,000 residents joined us Saturday as we dedicated our new Civic Center, which includes the city's fifth-largest park and a needed expansion of our award-winning library.

A note from Newport Beach Councilwoman Leslie Daigle : This week, city officials and others gathered at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club to celebrate the completion of the Lower Bay d redging project. By investing in a community effort in the protection and conservation of our waterways, we insure that future generations will benefit by the passions of those that take up the cause today. This project would have not been possible without the extraordinary team of professionals led by Col. Thomas Magness, whose unparalleled dedication to service to the nation and the citizens of Newport Beach was evident throughout the project.

Crews dredging sediment from the Santa Ana River Marsh in Newport Beach will be working in overdrive to wrap up a project that was scheduled to be complete a few weeks ago. The Army Corps of Engineers, which is pumping "good quality" sediment just offshore and trucking the rest to upland sites, expects to finish by March 31. Previously, the temporary pipeline running across the sand and into the water near 60th Street was scheduled to...

Re. "Newport completes lower-bay dredging," Feb. 15: An article by reporter Jill Cowan in the Daily Pilot highlights the completion of the Lower Bay (Newport Harbor) dredging. As I stated in the article, it was a "long, hard road to complete the big dredge. " The assistance of our federal and state partners helped achieve a breakthrough. There are few ways state and federal government dollars come directly back into our community. The Upper Newport Bay restoration project received $50 million in federal and state funds for completion prior to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers considering work on the Lower Bay. City Manager Dave Kiff and I went to Washington, D.C., to make the case for completion of the Upper Bay project.

A major dredging project in Newport Harbor wrapped up this week, leaving the lower bay cleaner and more navigable than it's been in decades, officials said. Now, the harbor is 10 to 16 feet deep in most spots. "First of all, I think it means we've greatly improved safety and navigation," Newport Beach Mayor Keith Curry said when asked about the roughly $7-million undertaking's close. "It substantially reduced the risk of [boats] running aground in low tide, and made the harbor cleaner and safer, because we were able to remove a lot of toxic material.

Contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have begun dredging sediment in the Santa Ana River Marsh in Newport Beach - some of which is being piped just offshore for beach replenishment, drawing concerns from residents. The roughly $5-million project, which will restore channel depths to improve water circulation and tidal flushing necessary for maintaining the 92-acre salt marsh habitat, is expected to be complete by the end of March. The Army Corps project is federally funded.

A dredging company this week sheared a sewage line, spilling thousands of gallons of bacteria-filled matter into Newport Bay. The area will be closed to swimmers through at least the weekend. Orange County Health Care Agency officials said they will need to see two consecutive days of clean samples from the water off the east edge of Newport Harbor, from Bayside Drive at Balboa Island to the edge of the Harbor Patrol headquarters to the south, before they reopen it. In the meantime, city workers and crews from RE Staite, the dredging company that broke the line, will investigate the break and figure out how to fix it. About 11 p.m. Wednesday, a dredging vessel broke off a 3-foot piece of an 8-inch wide main sewer line between the island and the mainland at Bayside Drive, spilling about 2,800 gallons of raw sewage into the water.

The Newport Beach City Council voted Tuesday to allocate an additional $3.9 million to dredging the harbor's shallowest spots, bringing the total project to $10.4 million, including federal funds. Some of the remaining sediment is contaminated with chemicals that cannot be sunk in the open ocean. The city has been dumping some similar material at the Port of Long Beach, which is using the dirt for a construction project. But the port recently told the city that it is full at the moment.

Sail straight and sail fast. With the Fourth of July quickly approaching, harbor use appears to be at an all-time high. Junior sailing has begun with Lido Isle and Newport Harbor Yacht Clubs having to adjust their racing areas because of the dredging. The larger dredge, Palomar, was still working at the east end of Lido and the smaller dredge, 180, was in front of the Lido Isle Yacht Club. While watching the dredging in front of Lido Isle, the cynic in me pictured a sabot mistakenly being picked up out of the water and placed on the barge.

Homeowners along Newport Harbor will have to contend with the noise and lights of dredging crews working around the clock over the next two months, city officials said. Newport Beach's harbor resources manager, Chris Miller, told the City Council on Tuesday that dredging crews wouldn't need to work every night, just nights when tides were high enough. The crews have to finish their work by June 30, when they lose the chance to dump the dredged soil for new use at the Port of Long Beach, he said.