EPA Plan for Sediment Dump in Prime Fishing Area Off San Pedro Hit

A federal plan to establish a permanent site for dumping sediment 5 3/4 miles off the coast of San Pedro--and smack in the middle of a prime commercial fishing area--has drawn criticism from fishermen and U.S. Rep. Mel Levine.

Sediment dredged from the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors has been dumped at the site on an interim basis for the last 10 years. At issue now is a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposal to officially designate the so-called “LA-2 site” as a future dumping ground.

According to an EPA study, the sediment contains “elevated levels” of the banned pesticide DDT, as well as PCBs, trace metals, oil and grease. Tests found that PCBs and pesticides are already contaminating the tissue of one variety of shrimp that feeds along the ocean bottom at the site, and Levine and the fishermen fear that the contamination could eventually affect mackerel, anchovies and other fish caught there.

“Santa Monica Bay and its surrounding waters have endured enough,” said Levine (D-Santa Monica), who in 1985 tried unsuccessfully to qualify the bay for EPA Superfund cleanup money. “It is imprudent and inappropriate to create a permanent dump site in the midst of prime commercial and sport fishing grounds.”

Levine wants the EPA to choose an alternate site, farther offshore and in deeper water, where fishermen are less likely to take bottom-dwelling fish. The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns., which represents 22 California fishing organizations, also favors a site in the deep-water region, the center of which is nearly 10 miles offshore.

The LA-2 site, which sits partly on the continental shelf and partly on a slope leading down into the San Pedro Basin between Los Angeles and Santa Catalina Island, ranges in depth from 390 to 1,050 feet. The area that Levine prefers is in the basin and is 2,100 to 3,000 feet deep.

The EPA, however, rejected that area, saying that it is too costly to haul the sendiment farther out and that it makes little sense to contaminate a new site.

Levine’s response is that the EPA should let the LA-2 site regenerate rather than make it worse. Furthermore, he asserts, the deep-water region may already be contaminated by dumping that goes on 5 3/4 miles away--a reference to the THUMS site (after the Texaco, Humbolt, Union, Mobil and Shell oil companies), which is used by the oil industry for dumping drilling muds and cuttings.

Patrick Cotter, an EPA environmental scientist, said he does not believe that the THUMS site has contaminated the deep-water site. And if it has, he said, the EPA would steer clear of the deep-water site because the agency likes to dispose of only one type of material in an area so that it can conduct accurate tests on the effects of different dumping.

Under Court Order

The EPA, under pressure from a federal court order, has until the end of this year to designate a permanent site off the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbor area for dumping the sediment, which is dredged from the harbors as part of routine maintenance of shipping channels and special port projects.

The deadline stems from a consent agreement that settled a 1980 lawsuit filed by the National Wildlife Federation to force the EPA to restrict ocean dumping by designating permanent dump sites across the country.

A lawyer for the National Wildlife Federation said his group did not comment on the EPA proposal for the LA-2 site, and has lost track of ocean dumping issues since its expert went into private consulting several years ago.

However, the Oceanic Society, an ocean-protection advocacy group based in Washington, recently criticized a similar plan by the Army Corps of Engineers to dump sediment dredged from the Oakland harbors in an area off the coast of San Francisco where commercial fishermen catch crab.

Clifton Curtis, the Oceanic Society’s president, said the organization urged the corps to consider using the dredged material for landfill, or establish the dumping site farther out in the ocean, beyond the continental shelf.

The EPA has established five temporary dumping sites in Southern California: the LA-1 site, north of Los Angeles off Port Hueneme, which Cotter said has never been used; the LA-2 site, directly south of the tip of San Pedro; the LA-3 site, three miles off Newport Beach; the LA-4 site off Point Loma near San Diego; and the San Diego 100-Fathom site.

Cotter said the EPA is also trying to designate the last site as permanent, and if it does so, the Point Loma site will no longer be used. Plans for the Port Hueneme and the Newport Beach sites are uncertain, he said.

Like the other sites, the LA-2 site has been established for a specific purpose: accepting dredged material, called dredge spoil, which generally comes from harbors. Since 1977, the Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for maintaining the harbor channels, has issued permits for 2.1 million cubic yards of sediment to be deposited at LA-2, although only 1.6 million cubic yards has actually been dumped.

That is enough sediment to fill about 200,000 dump trucks--a relatively small amount for a 10-year period, according to both Cotter and Vern Hall, harbor engineer for the Port of Los Angeles. Neither Cotter nor Hall could say how much dredge spoil would be dumped if the EPA plan is approved.

The Long Beach and Los Angeles ports, however, have plans to dredge 222 million cubic yards of sediment under their 2020 Plan, named because it charts the future of the ports until that year. Hall said the ports hope to use most of the dredged material as landfill to create an additional 2,400 acres for the harbors, but that some of it will have to be dumped out in the ocean.

Cotter said the LA-2 site is the EPA’s “preferred alternative” for the material for several reasons: agency regulations call for the EPA to give first priority to sites already in use; it would be more expensive to haul the dredge spoil to the deep water site, and it would be harder to monitor the effects of dumping there.

But he acknowledged that Levine raises “some very excellent points,” among them the potential effect on the fish, which the agency will take into consideration before making a final decision.

Downplays Harm

In its environmental impact study, however, the EPA concluded that continued dumping at the LA-2 site would not cause significant harm to the “benthic community”--the collection of crustaceans, worms, shrimp, crabs and other animals that live and feed along the ocean bottom and are eaten by other fish.

The study said any damage would be limited to the immediate dumping site and that “no significant effects are expected on the sediments or benthic fauna of the area surrounding the LA-2 site or the region in general.”

In a letter sent to Cotter last month, Levine challenged the EPA’s conclusions. “It is possible,” the congressman wrote, “to conclude that over an extended period of time, as DDT becomes more concentrated in the sediments of the LA-2 site, significant concentrations of DDT may be discovered in fish tissue.”

The congressman said he feared additional dumping would work its way up the food chain, and said the EPA study “offers no reason to discount (that) possibility.”

But in an interview, Cotter maintained that even though the EPA study showed contamination in the tissue of the shrimp species S. ingentis , the contamination is not environmentally significant in that “we’re impacting a very small part of the regional resource area.”