The Eureka Reporter/Nathan Rushton
Humboldt Baykeeper Program Director Pete Nichols shows California Coastal Commission members, from left, Bonnie Neely, Sara J. Wan and Meg Caldwell, a sample of sediment that is proposed to be dredged from Humboldt Bay during the Harbor District and the city of Eureka’s seven- to 10-year maintenance dredging.
Dioxin testing postpones maintenance dredging in bay
by Nathan Rushton, 9/16/2005
Newly discovered information announced during the California Coastal Commission hearing Wednesday regarding the presence of the cancer-causing chemical dioxin in Humboldt Bay led to an unexpected postponement of the application process for the seven- to 10-year maintenance dredging in Humboldt Bay.
The California Coastal Commission is an independent state agency with 12 voting members whose mission is to protect and enhance environmental and human-based resources of the state’s coast.
It was considering the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District and the city of Eureka’s application for the dredging removal of approximately 200,000 cubic yards of accumulated sediment.
Under the proposed dredge plan, the sediment to be removed from the Woodley Island Marina and the docking areas of Eureka’s 10 existing waterfront facilities.
The sediment would be transported by a several-mile-long pipeline around Woodley Island and under Highway 255 to a nearshore discharge site offshore of a popular beach on the Samoa Peninsula frequently used by surfers and dog walkers.
Following a dredge project overview by Harbor District and city of Eureka officials, a presentation by Humboldt Baykeeper Program Director Pete Nichols raised doubts that adequate testing had been conducted to detect the presence of the persistent chemicals in the bay.
The Humboldt Baykeeper program was launched in 2004 as a bay advocacy organization focused on the environmental health of Humboldt Bay, its watersheds and near-shore areas.
Left over from the lumber era when numerous mills dotted the bay’s banks, Nichols said pentachlorophenol, or penta, is a persistent and potent cancer-causing chemical, which was used as wood preservative and fungicide that ended up in the water.
Nichols said if the dredge sediment is contaminated with toxic chemical, it should be dumped in the EPA’s designated Humboldt Open Ocean Disposal Site, a one-square-mile area located several miles offshore of Humboldt Bay, or another appropriate storage site, but not a public beach.
Nichols also raised the issue that the sediment proposed to be dumped was completely opposite of the ratio of sediment-to-silt that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ guidelines recommend for disposal on beaches.
Instead of the 80 percent sand and 20 percent silt and clay the Army Corps guidelines allow, the Baykeeper group measured the sediment to be dumped at 15 percent sand and 85 percent silt and clay.
After the Baykeeper presentation, the public testimony proceedings were interrupted by the Coastal Commission’s Executive Director Peter Douglas, who announced, after an apparently closer examination of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers documents that mysteriously came into the possession of the Coastal Commission’s staff, that suggested dioxin was present in the bay.
“Either we have a continuance of this matter today and allow us to ask for more information on dioxin, or we change our recommendation to denial,” Douglas said, which brought cheers and clapping from some members of the audience.
Bonnie Neely, the Coastal Commission representative from the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, said she guessed that the issue of adequate testing was probably on everyone’s mind and recommended that the matter be continued, which was subsequently approved by a majority of the commissioners.
Jack Gregg, a water quality supervisor for the Coastal Commission, said the testing the Harbor District and the city of Eureka had done for most of the conventional chemicals, which was consistent with other dredge projects in the state, was adequate.
“But for dioxin and pentachlorophenols, we don’t have adequate data,” Gregg said.
Commissioner Dan B. Secord asked staff for an “operational deposition” of what had happened regarding the late-arriving information to determine if the commission had been misled.
“I really don’t understand why this application is now upside-down and I would like somebody to help me with that,” Secord said.
Douglas expressed to the commissioners that he was also unhappy with the way the events turned out.
“I don’t think that some of what you are asking for really serves a positive purpose at this point in terms of who did what-when-where,” Douglas said. “All I know is that we did not have this information on us to have an opportunity to respond to (it).”
Harbor District Chief Executive Officer David Hull and Eureka Department of Public Works Director Michael Knight both said the delay in the approval of the project application could potentially jeopardize the maintenance dredging project from moving forward this year.
“It’s a shame that the Baykeepers were sitting on some information that could have helped us avoid this,” Hull said.
The criteria for what the Harbor District and the city of Eureka were supposed to test for is dictated by the EPA and the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, Hull said.
“If they had said ‘go measure dioxin,’ we would have,” Hull said.
Hull said when the topic of dioxin was raised during meetings with the Humboldt Baykeeper this summer, he told them that the Harbor District wasn’t aware of any dioxin test results in the bay.
Hull said even Nichols’ presentation pointed out that the known contaminated sites had been closed down and the use of the toxic substance had not been allowed for more than 20 years.
Hull said the EPA probably hadn’t asked for the specific dioxin testing to be done because of those factors and that the dredge sites weren’t located near the known contaminated sites.
“There are innumerable things they can test for,” Hull said. “But they have to draw the line somewhere and say this is likely and this is not likely.”
Nichols said he was happy with the outcome of the meeting, which showed the Coastal Commission was really looking at the public health issue and the insufficient sampling in accordance with the application.
He agreed with Hull’s assertion that the EPA has to draw the line somewhere, but the parties needed to hear what the EPA has to say about the chemical composition of the sediment that is being proposed to be dumped on the public beach.
“If they were taking it to the (off-shore) site, we probably wouldn’t be saying that they need to test for dioxin,” Nichols said.
Nichols said the long-term cleanup of the contaminated sites in Humboldt Bay is on the radar of Humboldt Baykeeper, which the group is in the process of identifying and cataloguing.
He said the group would be willing to work collaboratively with the Harbor District to find funding for the dioxin testing.
(Nathan Rushton can be reached at nathan@eurekareporter.com.)
Copyright (C) 2005, The Eureka Reporter. All rights reserved.
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