Fishermen Assail Dumping of Silt in Ocean

When Half Moon Bay fisherman Steve Fitz returns phone calls these days, he identifies himself as “former fisherman, current dump site director.”

Fitz, spokesman for the Half Moon Bay Fishermen’s Marketing Assn., is only half joking. He still makes his living fishing for dungenness crab and dover, rex and petrale sole in the ocean waters off picturesque Half Moon Bay, 20 miles south of San Francisco.

But during the last several weeks, he has spent much of his time trying to stop the Army Corps of Engineers and the Port of Oakland from dumping tons of mud and silt into the rich fishing grounds where he and several hundred other fishermen ply their trade.

“This is just like saying, hey, excuse me guys, your way of life is over,” Fitz said.

The mud and silt are being dredged from the Oakland harbor as part of a $54-million expansion plan that port officials say is vital to the region’s maritime economy. Deepening the harbor channels from 35 feet to 42 feet will allow the port to accommodate the new generation of giant container ships increasingly being used in Pacific Rim trade. Port officials estimate that the expansion will create 1,800 new jobs and generate more than $179 million per year in sales and income.

Site Approved Last Month

The expansion, which the port hopes to complete by mid-1990, will dredge up 7 million cubic yards of mud and silt that must be disposed of somewhere.

After several months of wrangling over a dump site for the first 500,000 cubic yards of material, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the California Coastal Commission last month approved the current site, 26 miles southwest of the Golden Gate, near Half Moon Bay.

The site, in 300 feet of water, was a compromise among the Army Corps of Engineers, environmental groups, several state agencies, Bay Area congressional representatives, and a statewide fishing group, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns.

The Corps of Engineers, which is paying for 75% of the project, originally proposed dumping the silt near Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. But other groups involved opposed that location, saying that the site was already dangerously full and the dumping could interfere with navigation.

They also said that dumping such large amounts of soil could further damage the area’s fisheries, which have been declining for years. The mud at the bottom of the Oakland harbor contains oil, grease and slight amounts of heavy metals, including cadmium, silver, chromium and copper. The oil and grease will be separated from the dredgings and deposited on shore. The metals will remain, but the EPA has determined the levels are acceptable for ocean dumping.

The environmental groups involved favored depositing the material beyond the outer continental shelf, about 40 miles west of the Golden Gate. But the Corps of Engineers objected, saying that a site so far out at sea would be more expensive and more hazardous for barges, and would complicate the task of assessing environmental effects.

First Phase of Dumping

In the end, all the groups, including the fishermen’s federation, agreed on the Half Moon Bay site for the first phase of the dumping, with further study required before deciding where to put the other 6.5 million cubic yards.

But Half Moon Bay fishermen, who learned of the plan after the agreement was reached, said they feel that their interests were not represented by the fishermen’s federation. They fear that the dumping will irreparably damage the area, from which they brought in a catch worth $5 million last year.

“Somewhere along the line, the system did not get your input, and we apologize,” Brig. Gen. Patrick J. Kelly, commander of the South Pacific Division of the Army Corps of Engineers told the fishermen at a meeting Monday.

Fishermen are concerned that the mud will disturb fertile crab beds.

“You’re going to put these clumps of material out there and the fishing operations that use bottom nets to scrape along the bottom will not be able to fish the area,” said Jim McGrath, an analyst with the California Coastal Commission.

Worries About Metal

The fishermen also worry that the dredgings will contain greater amounts of heavy metals than the Corps estimates and are angry that the Corps relied on environmental impact data about the site that is more than 10 years old.

Earlier this month, the fishermen filed a federal lawsuit and obtained an emergency injunction to prevent the dumping. But the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week dissolved the injunction. On the night of May 12, a barge laden with mud and silt headed through choppy seas to Half Moon Bay to dump the first load.

The barge was met in the darkness by a flotilla of angry fishermen in 30 small boats. Shouting taunts, the fishermen tried unsuccessfully to block its advance, but the vessel continued on course and the dumping began. Since then, barges making two trips a day have dumped 15,000 cubic yards at the site.

Monday, the tide turned in the fishermen’s favor. San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Thomas Smith ordered the dumping stopped until a lawsuit filed by San Mateo County can be heard on May 27.

The Port of Oakland, however, has asked a U.S. District Court to throw out the San Mateo court’s order. A hearing is scheduled for Monday.

Costing Port Money

The port said it is losing $25,000 a day while the barges, a tug boat and a dredge sit idle in an Oakland estuary.

Port officials also are getting anxious about staying on schedule. Already, they said, the port is unlikely to meet a June 10 deadline for deepening the channel from 35 feet to 38 feet. On that day, the American President Lines giant container ship President Truman is scheduled to come into port.

Mel Wax, port director of public affairs, said the ship probably would be able to enter anyway because there will be a relatively high tide that day. “But certainly they won’t come into Oakland if they have to wait for a high tide every time,” he said.

Delays could also result in the loss of valuable contracts for shipping to Southern California or the Pacific Northwest, port officials said.