Report details toxins in Newport waters

Alex Coolman

NEWPORT BEACH -- Two pesticides, one of them banned by the

Environmental Protection Agency, are present in Newport Beach waters at

dangerous levels, according a draft report released by the Santa Ana

Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The 75-page document, which is available for public review and

accessible on the Internet, is a preliminary statement of the board’s

efforts to determine which chemicals pose the greatest threat to the

quality of Newport Bay and San Diego Creek, said Ken Theisen, sanitary

engineering associate with the board.

When the report has been through public review and adopted by the

water board and state and federal agencies, it will eventually become the

basis for setting daily limits on the amount of various toxins allowed

into the bay and creek.

The chemicals of greatest concern in Newport Harbor and the Back Bay,

according to the report, are the pesticides diazinon and chlorpyrifos,

which are present in the water at a level considered to be acute.

Over-the-counter sales of chlorpyrifos were banned by the

Environmental Protection Agency in June. But the ban will not actually

take effect until the end of 2001, and Theisen said the chemical is

already present in Newport Harbor and the Back Bay in levels sufficiently

concentrated to be lethal to small marine organisms such as water fleas.

“That’s probably what we consider to be the most significant problem,”

he said. “If we’re killing the stuff right off, that’s more of an impact

than, say, a chronic toxicity that might affect reproduction.”

Also a concern to the board -- though less immediately worrisome --

are sediment accumulation in the bay and problems in the Rhine Channel

area caused by the accumulation of substances such as DDT, mercury and

copper.

One chemical that isn’t emphasized in the report is selenium, a

substance that the Newport Beach environmental group Defend the Bay says

it would like to see eventually included in the daily limits.

Bob Caustin, director of the group, said much of the selenium in

Newport waters originates from construction in marshy areas of the

watershed, some of which now need extensive work to drain the water away

from their facilities.

Standards for the chemical, Caustin said, “should be set within what

has been proven to causes health risks. The levels that are there now [in

local waters] are excessive.”

Theisen said the regional board had not yet come to a firm conclusion

about the risk posed by selenium.

“That’s in the category of we need to do more study,” he said.

There should be time to undertake such a study. Approval for the final

toxic levels is not expected to take place until at least January 2002.

FYI

The text of the draft report is available online at o7

www.swrcb.ca.gov/rwqcb8/html/tmdls.htmlf7 .