Difficult Tasks Await New Director of Coastal Pollution Study Agency

Southern California’s top ocean pollution research agency finally has a helmsman.

Jeffrey Cross, who has served as interim director of the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project since June, 1991, has been named to head the agency, which is a key source of information on contamination of Santa Monica Bay and other coastal waters.

The Long Beach-based agency had been without a permanent director for a year and a half, leading to what officials said was poor morale and the resignations of nearly half the scientific staff.

Experts applaud Cross’ appointment, which will be formally announced later this month. With a director in place, they say, the organization can begin to rebuild its ranks and tackle other key problems--such as attracting more research money to shore up its beleaguered budget and moving from its crime-plagued headquarters.

“It’s a fresh beginning,” said Robert Ghirelli, executive officer of the state Regional Water Quality Control Board and head of the search committee that screened candidates for the $70,000-a-year post. “I think we’ve got a real opportunity here to get SCCWRP back on track.”

Cross’ job, however, will not be easy. Among other things, it involves the delicate political task of dealing with the four Southern California sewage agencies that provide the bulk of the agency’s funding. Securing adequate financial support from those agencies is a constant battle, staffers say, a fact that Cross was reminded of when he got his promotion.

“When he was picked, we shook his hand and gave him our condolences,” joked one staff scientist within the agency. “We know what a political job it is.”

The selection of Cross, made by a nine-member governing board comprising sewage and water quality officials, comes amid a period of extreme instability at the 22-year-old ocean pollution research agency.

Jack Anderson, the former director, was ousted in June, 1990, after less than five years on the job. Sewer officials on the organization’s governing board attribute Anderson’s forced resignation, which formally took effect the following August, to overspending by the agency during his tenure.

Others, however, believe that Anderson’s ambitious plans did not sit well with the sewage agencies that sponsor the organization--particularly his attempts to beef up laboratory facilities and involve the group with university research efforts.

Whatever its cause, Anderson’s firing and the long delay in replacing him contributed to sagging morale at the agency, which has lost 10 of its 25 full-time scientists, including its entire chemistry staff.

The departures have stirred concern among outside scientists, government officials and environmental groups that use the organization’s research in their work. The agency, those familiar with it say, is a crucial tool for environmental protection of Santa Monica Bay and other coastal waters.

“It’s really important to base policy on good science,” said Felicia Marcus, president of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works and a founder of the Santa Monica environmental group Heal the Bay. “A lot of the sins of the past that hurt Santa Monica Bay were done because public policy-makers didn’t understand what was happening out there.”

Cross, 42, was chosen after the search committee’s top choice, former EPA researcher Donald Baumgartner, decided last year not to take the job. But sources within and outside the agency are nevertheless pleased with the selection of Cross, who has been a biologist with the agency for 11 years.

They describe him as a fast-learning administrator whose firsthand experience with the organization’s problems will benefit the agency. Cross’ familiarity with marine research is also an asset, they say.

Cross began working for the water agency immediately after receiving a doctorate in fisheries from the University of Washington in 1980. Since then, he has spent much of his career studying the effects of pollution on fish.

Concentrating on white croaker and kelp bass, he found that reproduction of those fish in San Pedro Bay, site of sewage outfalls and pollution from the port of Los Angeles, has been an average 20% to 30% lower than in cleaner coastal waters.

“Jeff Cross has established himself as an excellent scientist,” said Mark Gold, biologist for Heal the Bay. “He’s also extremely candid. He speaks his mind.”

Cross said that in addition to gauging the effects of municipal sewage discharges in coastal waters, the agency should be used to study other ocean pollution sources such as urban runoff and the dumping of sediment dredged from local harbors.

“We’ve spent 20 years looking at municipal waste water discharge, and we know almost nothing about the effects of these other contaminants,” he said.

In conducting such research, however, Cross faces a welter of problems, the first of which is to find a new home for his agency. Plagued by vandalism at its current location on Pacific Coast Highway, just east of the Long Beach Freeway, the organization has received permission from its governing board to move.

But at least for 1992, the four sewage agencies that control the agency’s purse strings have refused to provide extra money to cover moving and renovation expenses. That leaves the agency to use its own budget to pay for the work, which Cross says could cost more than $200,000.

Said Cross: “It’s going to be tough.”

Another challenge is finding outside research money to bolster the $1.5-million annual budget--80% of which currently comes from the four sewer agencies, which serve Los Angeles, San Diego, and Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Then there’s the agency’s mission. Robert Eganhouse, head chemist until he resigned last September, said a main reason he resigned was that sewage officials overseeing the organization are not committed to an aggressive research program.

The officials, he says, are more interested in having the agency simply monitor coastal contamination levels rather than promote innovative studies of the effects of ocean pollution.

“The bottom line is the attitude of the sponsors because they jerk the chain,” said Eganhouse, now a research chemist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “If anybody can do something as director, Jeff can do it. But anybody may not be enough.”

Cross says he is determined to restore the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project as a strong and independent research agency.

“We’re going to do good quality scientific work,” he said. “We will maintain our scientific integrity.”