Silt Clogging Marina del Rey Entrance Channel : Environment: Boaters are outraged at the marina’s condition. But removing toxic sediment could endanger marine life and cost millions.

Frustrated by the slow response of federal agencies, Los Angeles County officials sounded the alarm this week that boating at Marina del Rey could be choked off by shoals unless sediment that has accumulated at the marina’s entrance channel is removed as soon as possible.

The sediment, however, might be so tainted with toxic metals that dredging and offshore disposal of the material would pose a hazard to marine life.

“There is now a very serious problem out there,” said Larry Charness, chief of planning for the county Department of Beaches and Harbors. “We need to get on with the dredging.”

Charness told the county’s Small Craft Harbor Commission Wednesday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is not satisfied with biological testing that has been done so far to determine the toxicity of the sediment.

Until the environmental agency determines how and where the material can be dumped, Charness said, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cannot do anything to reduce the accumulation of sediment in the entry channel or dredge the mouth of the harbor.

Charness said the EPA is more “concerned about a worm dying in a tank of water” than ensuring continued boating in and out of Marina del Rey. “We’ve got to overcome these regulatory agencies,” he said.

Initial testing found that the sediment contains varying levels of lead, copper, zinc, chromium, nickel and other pollutants--too much for it to be safely disposed of at an underwater dump site off the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

If further tests confirm the toxic danger, the material would have to be dredged, dried out and trucked to a toxic waste dump site on land, a process that Charness said would be expensive.

For the first time since the issue arose last year, Charness told the commission that the county--not the federal government--has the responsibility for finding a dump site and paying “enormous fees” for disposing of the material.

Commissioner Carole Stevens said federal agencies have been stalling on the multimillion-dollar dredging operation because they know the material is toxic. “There is no question in anybody’s mind, this is an environmental disaster,” Stevens said. “We’re going to have to pay to truck it away.”

Stevens warned that if nothing is done, boaters are going to be “sailing on Lake Marina del Rey.” She urged a concerted effort to have local members of Congress lobby the Corps of Engineers to move swiftly on the dredging.

“This is serious,” she said. “We are going to lose an entire marina.”

“Anything that could have gone wrong on this project did,” said Beaches and Harbors Director Ted Reed, who described the handling of the dredging by federal agencies as “almost like a farce.”

Charness said the first round of testing done by an outside laboratory last year for the Corps of Engineers was rejected because it was not done to scientific standards. Now, environmental agencies are demanding a new round of core sampling of the sediment.

Charness said the U.S. Coast Guard might have to move its operations out of Marina del Rey if the sedimentation worsens. And he said the Sheriff’s Department might find its search and rescue operations impaired in the event a plane crashes offshore from Los Angeles International Airport.

Boater Robert Leslie, executive vice president of the Marina del Rey Lessees Assn., said the marina entrance channel now is so clogged with sediment that access is restricted to three lanes of boats entering and leaving and will soon be down to two lanes.

“I don’t think you have much longer than six months.”