Silver Strand Passage : Port Agrees to Study 2nd Entrance for Bay

The effort to build a second entrance into San Diego Bay by cutting a passage through the Silver Strand was kept alive Tuesday when the Port District agreed to take over the next phase of the controversial proposal.

Both members of the Board of Port Commissioners, which approved taking part, and private supporters of the project emphasized that the decision in no way commits the Port District beyond making initial inquiries into the feasibility of a second harbor entrance.

“No one need worry . . . (there will be) no rush to judgment,” said Louis Wolfsheimer, chairman of the board.

‘Real Long Shot’

“Building a second entrance is a real long shot,” Wolfsheimer conceded, but explained that the Port District is now the appropriate government agency to evaluate the cut-through proposal, even though as many as 2 dozen other agencies have jurisdiction in the matter.

As a result of Tuesday’s vote, the San Diego Unified Port District will meet with the 2 dozen agencies in an attempt to identify the specific concerns each wants analyzed in a full-scale environmental study.

“If we don’t find out what their concerns are . . . then (the project is) doomed to failure,” said Don Nay, the Port District’s executive director. “It’s essential that we understand the relationships of the jurisdictions” that would be involved.

Depending on the outcome of those discussions and the scope of work of that would be required to satisfy the agencies--if they could be satisfied--a decision would be made about whether to attempt an environmental impact report.

Nay emphasized that both the state and federal governments--such as the State Lands Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers--”have absolute veto power” over construction of a second passage into the bay.

Supporters of the proposal noted that the Port District was the logical choice to take over the next phase because, as a government entity, it has the credibility and stature to put it on equal footing with the other agencies. That was a quality lacking in the private group formed to push the project, an organization called the Second Harbor Entrance Project (SHEP).

It was at SHEP’s urging that the Port District for now will carry the second entrance workload, even though the Port had tentatively approved allocating $600,000 to SHEP earlier this year for much the same job. But SHEP formally withdrew its request for the money Monday.

Jack Dimond, SHEP’s project manager and executive director, explained that SHEP’s board of directors felt that the Port District could do the work better and more efficiently than SHEP, and that it wanted to avoid questions about the “impartiality of the environmental studies” it was involved with.

Continued SHEP Role

Under the new division of responsibilities, SHEP will remain as a private group advocating the construction of the Silver Strand passage. And SHEP also urged the Port District to create an advisory committee, composed of citizen groups with an interest in the proposal, such as the Sierra Club, that would provide information and outline concerns that should be addressed at this early stage.

Although Chula Vista and National City representatives turned out to lobby for the project, residents of Coronado--some of whom are worried what effects the cut-through would have on beach sand erosion and water quality in Glorietta Bay, and Coronado’s representative on the board of commissioners, Raymond Burk--spoke out against the Port District playing a role.

Burk, who was the lone vote against the Port District’s involvement, said that past studies, including one done by the Corps of Engineers in the early 1980s, that were critical of a second entrance haven’t been “emphasized or accepted in the way (they deserve).”

“We’re told these new studies are very, very important . . . (but) I feel (there’s) sufficient evidence . . . this project will never pass muster,” Burk said.