Does the Left Hand
Know What the Right Hand Is Doing?

In the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve, the state is spending more than $7 million this year in an attempt to save one of the largest remnants of a saltmarsh ecosystem in southern California. Sediment has been flowing down San Diego Creek into the bay at so great a rate that tides can no longer flush it all out and the upper bay is filling in. So for months, a contractor has been dredging this sediment out of the bay, loading it onto a barge, and hauling it offshore for disposal. Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers, the County of Orange, and the Coastal Conservancy are studying what can be done in the upper watershed to reduce the flow of sediment and keep contaminants out of the 752-acre reserve.

Such costly interventions may be futile, however, in light of environmental destruction in the upper watershed, where earth-moving machines are cutting deep into the rolling foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, leaving giant gashes of exposed soil and gravel that will add to the sediment flow into the bay when the rains come.

The sedimentation problem in Upper Newport Bay began in the 1960s, when San Diego Creek was channelized as a flood control project and sent directly into the bay instead of through the San Joaquin Marsh. Now millions of cubic yards of mountains are being moved to carve new toll roads through the hills for new subdivisions on acreage that only a few months ago nurtured citrus groves and vegetables. While elsewhere in California long-buried streams are being resurrected from concrete and enlivened with willows and other natural streamside plants, here development practices still resemble those employed when the Los Angeles River was straightened and encased in concrete in the late 1930s. Parts of San Diego Creek and its tributaries, which drain a 118-square-mile watershed, are being confined to concrete-lined troughs to protect new developments from floods.

The Irvine Company is the largest private landowner in Orange County and the biggest of the upper watershed developers. Defend the Bay and other citizen groups are urging the company to adopt more environmentally sensitive methods of flood control: to allow streams to meander naturally in wider channels, to provide greenbelts between streams and developments, and to preserve open spaces where creeks could flood. Bob Caustin, founder of Defend the Bay, charges that the Irvine Company and other powerful entities have plowed over environmental regulations. Dave Kiff, assistant to the city manager of Newport Beach, is more tempered in his criticism. “The Irvine Company has done a lot of environmental harm but it has also done a lot of good,” he says. “They are trying to be ‘good neighbors’ and we are working with them to adopt a broader perspective of flood control.”

“We have attempted to retain soft-bottom areas where possible” in the creek, says Sat Tamaribuchi, the Irvine Company’s vice president for environmental affairs. About a mile of the nine-mile stretch in the area being developed is to be preserved in a natural state, he says. When the 93,000-acre Irvine Ranch property is built out (that is, when all developable land has been developed), more than 35 percent of the total acreage will remain in open space, including 21,000 acres committed as part of the county’s habitat conservation plan. Sediment flow will diminish, Tamaribuchi contends, as urbanization continues on hillsides and agricultural land. Not everyone agrees, however.

Fast-paced development on a massive scale has created the need for a variety of costly interventions to counteract environmental damage. A section of the Foothill Transportation Corridor—one of three new toll roads being constructed by a “virtual corporation” that will be dissolved as soon as the project is finished—has been built below the water table. Consequently, more than 1.3 million gallons of groundwater a day have to be pumped to keep the road from being submerged. In 1998 the Regional Water Quality Control Board granted a permit to the Transportation Corridor Agency, a joint powers agency set up for the toll road construction, to dump this water into the bay.

Although this water contained high levels of nitrates from surrounding farmland, the Transportation Corridor Agency and the Water Quality Control Board concurred that the untreated discharges would not negatively impact the bay. Defend the Bay disagreed, sued the Agency, and prevailed in court; the Transportation Corridor Agency was subsequently required to build a treatment facility to “denitrify” the pumped groundwater before discharging it.

Downstream, more than ten nonprofit organizations and public agencies are working to protect and enhance the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve, which is managed by the Department of Fish and Game. But upstream, citizen watchdogs are scarce and scattered. “There is very little environmental support” in the many housing developments and in cities including Irvine, says Jack Skinner of Stop Polluting Our Newport. “That’s part of the problem: a lack of awareness of the impacts that these communities have on the bay and the coast.”

On a recent spring day, the tributaries of San Diego Creek churned brown as they gurgled toward the bay. Last year, during the El Niño winter, immense volumes of this sediment-laden water scoured deep trenches and undercut stream banks. From Serrano Creek alone, over 400,000 cubic yards of silt and mud flowed into the bay, much of it the result of an upstream housing development.

The Coastal Conservancy is currently launching a Watershed Enhancement Plan to identify areas for restoration as well as to save some of the rapidly vanishing remnants of open space.

Sean Woods, an environmental consultant, works with the Coastal Conservancy.