Upper Newport Bay

A new study from a national environmental organization has found higher levels of bacteria in Newport Harbor and Upper Newport Bay than in the city’s surrounding coastal waters, but city and county officials say the water in the bay isn’t likely to make swimmers sick. The report from the Natural Resources Defense Council analyzed water quality results from beaches around the country. While the report found bacteria was a problem in some spots on Newport Bay, it probably isn’t from human waste, which could make a person ill, said Newport Beach Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff.

A new study from a national environmental organization has found higher levels of bacteria in Newport Harbor and Upper Newport Bay than in the city’s surrounding coastal waters, but city officials say the water in the bay isn’t likely to make swimmers sick. The report from the Natural Resources Defense Council analyzed water quality results from beaches around the country. The study found bacteria levels at the Newport Boulevard Bridge in Newport Harbor exceeded public health standards 30% of the time in 2008.

Just as if he had a watch, Bay Kitty, a 15-year-old gray-and-white tabby, would return to the Newport Beach home of Glenn and Paula Gelman at 7 a.m. and again 7 p.m. to receive his twice-daily insulin shots. The Gelmans knew their beloved diabetic cat was no more when he failed to return one evening a few weeks ago for his regular injection. “We were positive he was in trouble — we thought maybe he had fallen into a diabetic coma,” Glenn Gelman said. The next week, the Gelmans’ other cat, a 12-year-old big gray tom named Stripes, disappeared, leaving only a pile of fur across the street from their Sea View home.

It’s a nightly, pre-dinner ritual: I sit on the deck, enjoying a glass of wine or a cigar, while my significant other surfs the net. We converse through a screen door. Sometimes, the cat, who can be loud but hardly loquacious, weighs in. Wednesday night, the infusion of $17.3 million in federal stimulus money into the dredging of Upper Newport Bay came up. “See, I don’t agree with that,” she — my significant other, not the cat — said. “The Upper Bay is a precious natural resource,” I pointed out. “And by most all accounts, and despite the vigorous fundraising efforts of city officials, the bay is turning into a meadow.

Thank you, Leslie Daigle, Loretta Sanchez, Dianne Feinstein, Ed Royce, Barack Obama and the numerous California advocates who lobbied, petitioned, exerted and groveled for the much-needed funding for the vital shovel-ready dredging of the Upper Newport Bay. As an Eastside resident, I observe the excavators remove, inch-by-inch, large scoops of contaminated mud from the sediment-choked bay daily. Every day, I observe a little more water current, a little less stagnation. Every day, I see an island used for endangered nesting once connected by sediment deposits now completely surrounded by deepened channels free from coyotes and bobcats.

The Peter and Mary Muth Interpretive Center will host its 19th annual Earth Day celebration with children’s activities, film and live music 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Children can take part in a scavenger hunt at the event, where they will learn about plants and animals. The Newport Beach Film Festival will screen short environmental films at the interpretive center as part of the Earth Day celebration from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The event also will feature an eWaste collection center, where people can drop off their old electronics for environmentally friendly disposal.

Newport Beach resident Arleen Heywood says she doesn’t know where she’ll live after Easter Sunday. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department is slated to evict 75-year-old Heywood, her dog and disabled adult son today from her home in Bayview Landing Senior Apartments in Newport Beach. “I’ve run out of money,” Heywood said she told an Orange County judge at an eviction hearing last month. With views of Upper Newport Bay, a movie theater and fitness center, Bayview Landing opened in December 2005 as a premier affordable-housing complex for seniors in Orange County.

A Newport Beach house once owned by Ken Niles, a 1920s-era radio personality and movie actor who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, recently went up for sale. The 36,000-square-foot property a few blocks from the Upper Newport Bay has been owned by James and Louise Barclay for the last four decades. Their son, James Jr., has put the home up for sale. Niles began his radio career shortly after the first radio stations started broadcasting programming over the air waves.

U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) is asking Congress for $13 million to finish dredging in Upper Newport Bay. “Dredging Newport Bay for environmental quality and aquatic purposes is a long-held goal of the city. After all, it’s the jewel of our community,” Newport Beach Councilwoman Leslie Daigle said. “We appreciate Congressman Calvert’s responsiveness to community needs.” Calvert serves on the powerful House of Representatives appropriations committee.