They Won't Go With the Flow : Environment: Activists and property owners are at odds with city and water officials over a plan to empty treated sewage into Upper Newport Bay.

By ENRIQUE LAVIN

Sept. 14, 1995 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

NEWPORT BEACH —

Environmentalists and property owners are raising a stink about a plan to empty highly treated sewage into Upper Newport Bay.

Under the proposal by the Irvine Ranch Water District, as much as 5 million gallons of treated waste water, known as reclaimed water, would flow daily through a series of ponds in the San Joaquin Marsh in Irvine to San Diego Creek and, finally, to Upper Newport Bay.

The Wetlands Water Supply Project, the water district says, would save up to $30 million a year while supplying the migratory waterfowl ponds of the San Joaquin Marsh with reclaimed water from October through March, when it would blend with natural water sources. Water district officials say the savings would come from bypassing the Orange County sanitary system, which now handles the waste water and eventually empties it into the ocean.

The reclaimed water that would be flushed into the creek is much cleaner than the run-off water that drains into the creek during the winter, water district officials said. Contaminants such as motor oil and other fuels that drain off city streets into the bay are much more dangerous than the reclaimed water, which is typically used for watering playgrounds, golf courses and parks, said Ken Thompson, director of water quality for the water district.

The project, which has the support of the Newport Beach City Council, will get a two-year trial if it is approved by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board on Dec. 1, said Thompson, who will address a public forum on the plan Monday at 7 p.m. at Newport Beach City Hall.

The district Friday will release its final environmental impact report for public review. The public will have a chance to give input until Sept. 25, when the district board of directors is scheduled to meet and consider certifying the report.

If all permits are obtained, the district could start running the project--expected to cost $950,000, principally to build a pump house--as early as January, 1996. No water rate increase is anticipated.

Opponents plan to campaign against the proposal. Environmentalists say the plan would endanger the fragile ecology of the bay. Other critics assert unknown viruses could escape through the filtration process--a fear district scientists say is unfounded. Property owners near the bay say the very idea of treated sewage in the bay would damage the area’s image.

“You can’t dress it up in a champagne glass and call it champagne,” said Bob Caustin, a Newport Beach real estate broker who has been leading the campaign against the water district’s plan. “It’s sewage.”

Caustin’s group, Citizens For a Sewage-free Bay, said they fear signs will be posted at the water’s edge warning people not to enter--something that could deter people from buying homes or scare away tourists. In a letter addressed to the City Council last week, the Balboa Island Improvement Assn., Balboa Island Business Assn. and the Little Island Property Owners Assn. opposed the project on those grounds.

District officials say such advisories won’t be necessary because the water will be safe.

Peer A. Swan, president of the water district’s board of directors, said Caustin is misinformed and has been using scare tactics to attack a sound project. “The health department would not allow us to do this if it puts people at risk,” he said.

Still, the residents have found an ally in the state Department of Fish and Game, whose ecologists believe the influx of treated water would generate more algae blooms in the bay, a phenomenon they have been battling for decades.

“The Department of Fish and Game, municipalities and local citizens have been working for years to improve the quality of the bay,” said Troy D. Kelly, a Department of Fish and Game ecologist. “Historically, the bay didn’t have a free water flow. We don’t want to see projects that . . . add more nutrients and more fresh water into the bay.”

In July, the Department of Fish and Game wrote to the district contending that any additional fresh water added to the salt water bay would have significant impact on fish and wildlife.

Kelly said the district’s draft environmental impact report, for example, did not address what effect the treated water would have on three endangered species that inhabit the bay, including a rare bird, the light-footed clapper rail. About 65% of the bird’s worldwide population inhabits the bay.

“The project is not about benefiting the wildlife, that’s the problem,” he said. “They say, ‘Let’s test this for two years.’ But in reality, it would take longer than two years to determine the impact on the environment.”

District scientists disagree.

They say two years is enough time to determine the viability of the project and they downplay concerns about algae blooms and other bad effects on the ecology.

Wetlands specialist Keith Macdonald said the volume of water that would be dumped in San Diego Creek’s water stream is so minute--in comparison to the tidal flow--that any nutrients conducive to algae blooms would be diluted in the process.

In addition, Macdonald, a senior ecologist for CM2Hill, a national environmental engineering firm consulting the district, contends that the ecosystem would not be disturbed when the district flushes the waste water.

“The organisms that live there are adapted to a highly variable environment, particularly in changes in the water from summer to winter,” Macdonald said. “If Kelly said, ‘What if they pumped water in the summer?’ then I would say the organisms would be affected.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Water Worries

Plans by the Irvine Ranch Water District to release 5 million gallons of reclaimed water a day into San Diego Creek and then to Upper Newport Bay have upset environmentalists and property owners. A look at how reclaimed water is made, what it’s used for and how it compares with potable water.

What’s In It?

Here’s how drinking and reclaimed water contaminants compare; figures in milligrams per liter.

Contaminants: Dissolved solids

Potable: 237

Reclaimed: 761

Contaminants: Phosphates

Potable: not detectable

Reclaimed: 2.4

Contaminants: Nitrates

Potable: not detectable

Reclaimed: 1

Uses