Report on Bay Safety Called ‘Inaccurate’ : Environment: Member of panel resigns, saying port district’s report was premature and failed to consider some contamination dangers.

A leading San Diego environmentalist resigned Thursday from the San Diego Unified Port District’s Toxic Waste Advisory Committee, calling “premature and inaccurate” a recently released committee report stating that chemical agents found in San Diego Bay pose no direct harm to human beings.

Jay Powell, special projects director for the Environmental Health Coalition, said the release of the information “created a false impression that the bay was safe.” He also questioned how the committee could make “blanket statements” assuring that the agents studied cause no harm.

But Louis Wolfsheimer, chairman of the Board of the Port Commissioners, defended the findings, released at a press conference last Friday. The toxic waste task force’s clean-up subcommittee said levels of copper, radiation and PCBs--toxic, man-made fluids--found in the bay pose a negligible hazard and are of “relatively little concern” to human beings.

The subcommittee also stated that levels of tributylin--a highly effective biocide used in marine paints to keep algae off boat bottoms--were also deemed harmless.

The results were extracted from a yet-to-be-completed study being conducted by the advisory committee, which was established by the port commissioners in March to evaluate pollution in the bay. The committee’s final report, expected to be finished within three months, will make recommendations on how the port district can cleanup and prevent further contamination of the bay.

Powell said the subcommittee had no authority to release such preliminary findings without first discussing it with the entire 21-member task force, which is composed of environmentalists, business people, water pollution regulators and scientists. It also includes representatives from San Diego State University’s Center for Marine Studies and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

In his resignation letter to Wolfsheimer, Powell wrote that information released without a complete review “severely compromises the integrity of the process and calls into question the motives of the Port District.”

The advisory committee was established in response to the state regional Water Quality Control Board’s ruling in February that the the port district was just as responsible for a case of copper pollution in the bay as the company that mishandled the metal concentrate during storage and loading between 1985 and 1986 at the 24th Street Marine Terminal in National City.

In his letter, Powell added that the Port District “appears to be acting primarily to minimize their liability.”

Wolfsheimer rebutted such charges and said there was no need to present the findings to the entire committee.

“We had the creme de la creme of the scientific community say that the chemicals studied (in the amounts found in the bay) were not a threat to human beings,” Wolfsheimer said. “We were very impressed by this information and thought the citizenry deserved to know about it. With all due respect to Jay, these guys have Ph.Ds. upon Ph.Ds. I realize that Jay may be concerned that he couldn’t get his two cents in, but even if he did that wouldn’t have changed the data.”

According to Wolfsheimer, the cleanup subcommittee made its decision to release the information after consulting an outside panel of scientists who had reviewed measurements taken by researchers, including those at the water quality board, SDSU, Scripps and the Navy.

“We believed that there were people out there wondering if it’s OK to go swimming in the bay or go boating,” Wolfsheimer said. “We thought it was important that we answer those questions.”

But Powell said that he was appalled that the committee was encouraging recreational use of the bay.

“Why are they assuring people that it’s OK to go swimming in the bay?” Powell said. “We’re not saying people can’t go swimming, but we’re surely not encouraging them either. How can they make such blanket statements?

“The Environmental Health Coalition cannot tolerate it,” Powell said. “We cannot condone it. That’s why I resigned. The fact that I was out of the loop is a real minor factor.”

The Environmental Health Coalition is a San Diego-based public interest organization that has been addressing hazardous materials and waste issues for the past 10 years. In 1987, Powell launched the coalition’s Clean Bay campaign to spearhead cleanups of San Diego Bay and sponsor public awareness programs.

Powell also expressed concern because the committee has yet to study biological pollutants in the bay, such as bacteria and viruses, which researchers believe pose a far greater threat to humans.

Dr. Harold Simon, who heads the task force’s cleanup subcommittee, also said he was worried about such biological contaminants at last week’s press conference. Simon, an international health policy professor at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, has written extensively about several health policy topics, including infection and infectious diseases.

Although the chemical agents studied were found to pose no direct threat to human beings, Simon did say the pollutants apparently contaminate marine life. He confirmed that fish with deformed gills and tumors have been found recently in the bay.

As a result, Simon said the committee plans to study people who eat fish from the bay to determine links between illness and digestion of contaminated fish. The task force is also expected to evaluate workers, such as divers, who spend considerable time in the bay to assess the effects of long-term contact with the bay water.

“I have the highest regard for Jay and his knowledge of this field,” Wolfsheimer said. “I’m sorry that he’s resigning and I urge him to reconsider. I would want him to ask these tough questions when the final report is presented.”