Muck Is Dropped in Wrong Place Off Coast
Crews dredging Upper Newport Bay dropped 600,000 cubic yards of silt in the wrong spot off the coast, officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday.
The misplaced muck was equivalent in volume to 60,000 dump-truck loads, EPA officials said.
“This was a lot of material,” said Brian Ross, dredging projects coordinator for the EPA in San Francisco. “We’re not particularly concerned about contamination, because [the silt] was found to be clean and nontoxic. But even just the physical smothering effect can be significant if it’s an important area.”
John Sibley, head of Orange County’s public facilities department, said federal officials want to know if there was any damage to the ocean ecosystem and county officials want to know what went wrong.
Dredging crews blamed the mistake on incorrect coordinates plugged into a Global Positioning Satellite system used to locate the dump site, five miles off Newport Beach.
Since the project began last year, the material has been deposited about half a mile southeast of the approved site, officials said.
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