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Panel OKs $25 Million to Aid Coastal Ecosystem

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Times Staff Writer

The state Coastal Commission on Wednesday unanimously approved spending $25 million in settlement money to help Southern California’s coastal ecosystem recover from a massive DDT deposit, but only on the condition that a project to return bald eagles to Santa Catalina Island continue for the next 10 years.

A coalition of six state and federal resource agencies, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had planned to cut off funding that has been helping to reestablish the island’s eagles. But the commission, which has oversight over all projects that affect coastal resources, rejected that plan.

Instead, the commissioners insisted that federal and state authorities allocate $250,000 annually for the eagles for the next 10 years.

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Catalina’s bald eagles are unable to reproduce without human help because their eggs contain high levels of DDT, a now-banned pesticide that Montrose Chemical Co. discharged off the Palos Verdes Peninsula throughout the 1950s and ‘60s.

For 25 years, researchers helped the eagles by climbing cliffs, removing their eggs from nests, hatching them in incubators and then returning the chicks to their nests. Since 1991, the money for the eagle work had come from a $140-million settlement paid by Montrose, other chemical companies and about 100 municipalities.

But this summer, the six agencies that administer the money, called the trustees, decided to stop funding the program, at least until there was evidence that the eagles could reproduce on their own. Instead, they planned to fund a project to bring eagles to the northern Channel Islands, where they would probably be less contaminated. Environmentalists called Wednesday’s vote a victory.

“We’re very, very pleased with the commission. We think it’s the right thing to do,” said Leslie Baer of the Catalina Island Conservancy, an environmental group. “Catalina has 1 million visitors a year, including 60,000 schoolchildren a year, and many of them look forward to seeing the bald eagles. It’s the best location for people to enjoy this natural resource.”

Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas said the commissioners gave conditional approval to the trustees’ settlement plan, imposing only one condition -- that the Catalina eagle program be maintained at its current funding.

Under federal law, NOAA and the other trustees can say they tried to comply with the commission’s order and proceed with their funding cuts anyway.

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“But that rarely happens,” Douglas said. If it does, “our only recourse is to sue.”

NOAA officials were unavailable for comment late Wednesday. The trustees had said they were suspending the program because it would be a waste of the settlement money if there was no way for the eagles to reproduce without human help.

Since the effort began in 1980, more than 100 eagles have been released on Catalina; 15 to 20 live there now. The introduced birds thrive, but by the time they mate, they have collected so much DDT in their bodies that they produce eggs with shells that dehydrate or break.

An estimated 100 tons of DDT remain on the ocean floor off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and the chemicals continue to accumulate in marine life.

About half of the $25 million in settlement money allocated from 2006 through 2010 will be spent on rehabilitating birds and half for fish.

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