COUNTYWIDE : Festival Puts Ocean in the Limelight

As an oil tanker fire raged in the Gulf of Mexico and with memories still fresh of the Huntington Beach spill, Newport Beach officials and environmentalists Monday announced plans for a festival they hope will heighten awareness of the grim realities of toxic pollution.

Against a backdrop of pleasure boats at the Lido Marina Village wharf, a group representing more than 100 businesses and organizations and calling itself Stop Toxic Ocean Pollution warned that without the proper precautions, the idyllic coastal lifestyle could fall victim to pollution.

“As I stand here today, a Norwegian (oil) tanker is about to sink in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Robert H. Sulnick, executive director of the Santa Monica-based American Oceans Campaign, a national, nonprofit organization that will receive proceeds from the June 24 festival and a golf tournament the following day.

“And in Huntington Beach . . . we had the best possible scenario (weather and terrain) for an oil spill, and still couldn’t clean it up,” he said, referring to the February incident in which the tanker American Trader dumped thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean, closing public shores from Seal Beach to Laguna Beach.

In Orange County, the spill dealt a financial blow to ocean sports-related retailers and tourist businesses.

The festival will be on the streets of Lido Marina Village in Newport Beach from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and will include a chowder cook-off, live entertainment, environmental awareness education and a host of celebrity supporters. On June 25, a $325-per-person celebrity golf tournament is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Tustin Ranch Golf Club.

Newport Beach Mayor Ruthelyn Plummer praised the festival as a way to “get the grass-roots support that is going to send a message to our legislators,” while Sulnick called Orange County “one of the focal points of ocean protection for California.”

Since 1986, Orange County’s coastal city officials have worked with local congressmen to fight federal plans to lease offshore oil drilling tracts in area waters.

The American Oceans Campaign has lobbied for the same goals from its Washington office, in addition to serving as an umbrella organization for other prominent environmental groups on ocean preservation issues.

On the local front, the Huntington Beach-based Surfrider Foundation, founded in 1984 with the same goals as the 2-year-old American Oceans Campaign, will have a booth at the festival although it won’t receive proceeds from the fund-raiser.

The American Oceans Campaign lobbies for oil spill liability legislation, moratoriums on offshore drilling, development of alternative fuels, bans on gill-net fishing and toxic dumping and increased protection of coastal ecosystems.