CALIFORNIA ALBUM : Town Throws Life Jacket to Sailor in Hot Water : Santa Cruz rallies to support Aaron Ahearn, who is in deep with the Navy over his refusal to dump garbage into the ocean. Boosters say he is just living up to the city’s environmental ethic.

There is nothing this seaside city likes better than a meaty social cause.

Nuclear weapons, the perishing rain forests, El Salvador death squads, the plight of panhandlers. . . . No matter the subject, the good citizens of Santa Cruz are forever eager to weigh in with their views.

Now they have a hot new topic to fret and froth over, the case of a 20-year-old surfer-turned-Navy seaman named Aaron Ahearn.

Ahearn’s name may ring a bell. The son of a local real estate agent, he made headlines in April after saying that he abandoned his ship to protest orders that he dump garbage and sewage into the sea.

Critics call Ahearn a flake, suggesting that he couldn’t hack the Navy and concocted his anti-dumping stance in the hope that it would provide an easy way out.

But here, the sandy-haired sailor has become an instant eco-hero, spawning a movement that embraces surf dudes, New Age philosophers, whale lovers, anti-war activists--even the county Board of Supervisors.

“We seem to make environmentally conscious children here, children who aren’t afraid to speak out about threats to the planet,” said April Burns, whose organization, the Santa Cruz Resource Center for Nonviolence, has taken the lead in championing the sailor’s cause.

“Aaron Ahearn is one of them. We’re proud and we’re going to do whatever we can to help him out.”

*

Ahearn was not one of those kids who glued together model warships and dreamed of joining the Navy. In fact, he seemed to harbor an anti-military streak; two years ago, he led hundreds of Santa Cruz high school students in a boycott and march to protest the Persian Gulf War.

But after graduating, Ahearn was at loose ends. So he followed in the wake of his grandfather and joined the Navy to become a welder.

He landed aboard the Abraham Lincoln, an Alameda-based aircraft carrier that houses nearly 6,000 sailors. Instead of welding, Ahearn wound up assigned to sewage and scullery detail, performing chores he contends he could not bear.

Ahearn said he was ordered to release raw sewage near port and toss 200 sacks of trash overboard daily, garbage that included plastics, oils and cardboard. Other sailors, he said, frequently dumped solvents, paint, computers and furniture.

“I tried not to think about what I was doing, but it hurt,” Ahearn said. He asked for a job transfer, but his superior “ripped up the request in my face.” He tried to document the dumping, but Ahearn said a senior seaman threw his camera into the ocean.

And when he sought counseling from the carrier’s chaplain, he was referred for a psychological evaluation instead.

On Feb. 13, Ahearn went AWOL. He returned to his ship 10 weeks later, after airing his trash-dumping stories in the press.

The Navy, which deposits 63,356 tons of garbage a year into domestic waters, defended its trash-handling practices but is investigating Ahearn’s charges. Under federal law, the military’s at-sea dumping of plastics is legal until the end of this year, but the disposal of toxic waste, computers and other large debris is not.

“We take these allegations very seriously,” said Lt. Kenneth Ross, a spokesman for the Pacific Fleet. “We have some difficult problems in the Navy, like tight storage space (for trash) on our ships. But it’s our intent to meet and exceed every environmental law.”

*

One of the hottest surf breaks in Santa Cruz is Pleasure Point, a scenic fist of land that juts into the Pacific south of the yacht harbor. Pleasure Point was Ahearn’s favorite surf spot, and fellow wave riders remember him well.

Ahearn, they say, lettered on the Soquel High School surf team. Unlike most of his peers, who favor the more radical moves possible on short surfboards, Ahearn was a longboarder with a dance-style approach to the sport.

At the age of 13, he became a dues-paying environmentalist, joining the Surfrider Foundation. Howard (Boots) McGhee, a foundation official, recalled that Ahearn “was always there picking up trash at the beach cleanups, ever since he was a kid. It’s not like it was just yesterday that he became dedicated to the sea.”

The Navy has yet to charge Ahearn, in part because he is hospitalized with four leg fractures suffered in a motorcycle accident earlier this month. His punishment could range from a pay reduction to a dishonorable discharge and five years in the brig.

His supporters in Santa Cruz insist that he be spared such a fate and are waging an aggressive campaign on his behalf. They have convened innumerable news conferences to praise his stand and have dug up testimonials from former seamen corroborating Ahearn’s trash-dumping charges.

The popular grunge-rock band Pearl Jam held a benefit concert for Ahearn, and flyers with his picture and a plea for help have begun popping up all over town. A legal defense fund--begun last week--stands at $3,000 and is growing quickly.

Boosters say Ahearn’s beliefs about the environment are all but universal in Santa Cruz, a town where recycling has long been a way of life and development is a villain fought at every turn.

Peter Ogilvie, an activist rallying support for the young sailor’s case, put it this way: “The environmentalist’s credo of ‘Think globally, act locally,’ was as much a part of (Ahearn’s) growing up as ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ ”

That, in essence, is what the Board of Supervisors said when it waded into the debate. In a resolution of support sent to the Navy, the board declared that Ahearn’s behavior is consistent with the “strongly felt moral” beliefs about the environment that prevail in Santa Cruz.

“He has taken this stand based on deep feelings about environmental protection that he learned right here in our community,” said Supervisor Gary Patton, the resolution’s sponsor. In 1990, he said, Santa Cruz voters overwhelmingly approved a measure creating an environmental ethic for the region and setting goals for environment-friendly living.

“Aaron Ahearn took all that to heart and simply could not go against his conscience,” Patton said.