NEWPORT BEACH : Residents Favorable to Bay Dredging Plan

An Army Corps of Engineers proposal to dredge a 250-foot-wide, 15-feet-deep channel in Upper Newport Bay received mostly favorable feedback from Newport Beach area residents during a preliminary presentation this week.

About 50 people attended the meeting, with most saying dredging was needed in the bay. But many sought assurances that sensitive environmental areas would be protected.

“The interest of the people here is very much tied up in not degrading the ecological value of the area,” Frank Robinson, a member of the environmental group Friends of Newport Bay, said during the public meeting.

The meeting, organized by members of the corps, was the first on the project, which still is in the preliminary stage. The corps will study the dredging plan for one year, but it is likely to take about five years for the project to win final federal approval and dredging to begin, officials estimated.

Silt and sediment accumulate in parts of the bay and need to be removed to help improve navigation and recreational uses of the area. The area targeted for dredging is the lower part of Upper Newport Bay, roughly from the Coast Highway bridge to the lower boundary of the state ecological reserve.

However, corps officials emphasized that since the plan was in the formative stages, the area to be dredged could change. Ultimately, they said, the corps could dredge the entire bay, including areas in the state reserve and below the bridge in the lower part of the harbor.

The dredging project “could be extended into whatever areas we could justifiably extend it into,” said Pam Castens, a spokeswoman for the corps.

Residents’ environmental concerns center on shallow public tideland waters--which serve as a halibut nursery--below an area known as Upper Castaways. That concern surfaced again recently when a company wanted to build a private marina there. The opposition forced a scaled-back marina plan to save the nursery.

Some residents at the hearing Thursday favored dredging immediately, since silt has built up in parts of the bay in recent years because of heavy storms that have brought extra soil from feeder channels.

Other residents expressed concern about dredging only the center part of the bay, and wanted the engineers to consider stopping the soils before they enter the bay from San Diego Creek and elsewhere.

Some were also hopeful that the corps would extend the project to the lower bay, where most of the built-up silt ends up.

“It’s not ours, and we’re forced to pay for dredging it,” said Edward V. Powers, president of California Recreation Co., which operates the Irvine Co.-owned marinas in the harbor.

Corps representatives said such concerns would be taken into consideration when drafting the formal proposal, and that they planned to have another meeting with interested residents in coming months.