Clean Beach Think Tank Proposed

A UC Irvine scientist has proposed an independent think tank called California Clean Beach Center to coordinate research on coastal pollution and Southern California’s ocean systems.

“We need to bring a coordinated approach to these problems,” Stanley B. Grant said Tuesday. “A center would be essential in bringing together smart people from different disciplines to do research on these complex systems and to solve a critical resource issue for California.”

The idea was inspired in part by obstacles that health officials, engineers and biologists encountered trying to obtain and coordinate information during the search for a source of the pollution that closed four miles of Huntington Beach for two months last year.

Scientists say there is much about ocean dynamics that they do not know.

The center is just a concept with no funding yet, Grant said. It would cost $20 million to $30 million to open and would likely be based at UC Irvine. Possible finance sources would be the state and federal grants.

Scientists are planning a conference in March to come up with a research agenda for the center. One of the problems officials encountered in 1999 was an inability to quickly mobilize academics, said Steve Weisberg, executive director for the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, which also studies coastal pollution.

Weisberg’s group, which has an annual budget of $2.5 million, is financed by sanitation districts in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties as well as state and regulatory agencies.

“Yes, there will be some overlap, but I don’t see this as being in conflict,” Weisberg said. “There will be more people doing more research, and we view that as a good thing. There is so much out there to be done.”