Beach Projects Planned With Spill Case Funds

Ten years after the American Trader spilled 416,000 gallons of oil, fouling 15 miles of Orange County beaches, government officials now have a plan to allocate an $11.6-million legal settlement for a range of beach and recreational projects.

Most of the money, about $8.4 million, will be used by the cities of Newport Beach and Huntington Beach for a series of projects ranging from improvements to the Balboa and Newport piers to Huntington Beach’s ongoing plans to upgrade its south beach.

“I think the biggest benefit is that we’ve received enough money to do a wide variety of projects that would appeal to all different types of users of our beaches,” said Newport Beach Assistant City Atty. Robin Clauson. Work on different projects will begin after planning is done and the projects receive permits, Clauson said.

The plans also include $750,000 to design and begin work on a new Shellmaker Island Marine Education Center, a joint project of Newport Beach and the state Department of Fish and Game. The center, to be opened along Upper Newport Bay, is intended to help relieve pressure on Corona del Mar’s Little Corona Beach tide pools, whose popularity among school groups has raised concerns about whether they are being damaged by too many visitors.

“It will be some sort of education facility, hopefully dealing with tide pools . . . and the impact of urban runoff on an estuarial environment,” Clauson said.

The agreement, announced this week, ends a long dispute over the spill, which began when the 800-foot American Trader ran over its own anchor Feb. 7, 1990, as it moored at a now-abandoned oil terminal 1.3 miles off Huntington Beach. The resulting leak was Southern California’s worst in 20 years, closing beaches for five weeks and killing more than 1,000 birds and animals.

The $11.6 million is part of a $16-million settlement reached after an Orange County jury found Attransco, the corporate owner of the ship, responsible for the spill. The settlement was reached to avoid lengthy court appeals, and the remainder of the proceeds went to legal fees and courts costs.

In a precedent-setting verdict that preceded the settlement, the jury found that the public suffered legal damages as a result of the beach closures. Jurors valued a day at the beach at $13.19.

That financial settlement followed others--with BP America, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Liability Fund and Golden West Refining Co.--that netted $25 million to reimburse local and state agencies for cleanup costs and for programs to restore and protect wildlife habitats and establish a fish hatchery program in Carlsbad.

Local agencies must use the money for recreation-related projects within the area affected by the spill. That restriction precluded using money for what one beach activist described as a more pressing need: establishing a broad response procedure for volunteers in the event another spill happens.

“After the spill, I went down with other people eager to help out in any way we could, but we were told to get out, we don’t know what we’re doing,” said Nancy Gardner, co-founder of the Newport Beach chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. “It’s too bad that we don’t have some of that funding to do a bit more in terms of precaution.”

In Huntington Beach, the money will allow the city to proceed with long-standing plans for $7 million in renovations to the south beach, said Ron Hagan, the city’s director of community services. “[The] council approved the master plan in 1992, but we never had the money to do it,” he said. “This couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.”

The master plan includes new bathrooms and beach showers, sand walls along pathways and roads to reduce beach erosion, and new, wider bike trails.