On the Harbor: Harbor Commission meeting

Winter is coming are so are the changes to title 17

By LEN BOSE

I attended this month’s Harbor Commission meeting and before I left the house, I informed my wife that the meeting might go late into the night. “Okay, I’ll have your dinner on the stove waiting for you,” she said. I decided not to ask what she was cooking because it would have been that much more difficult to leave the house. I confirmed my suspicions when I noticed the meeting packet was thicker than a George R.R. Martin novel. No, the harbor is not on fire but there was a lot of information to fly over for one night, and I am not much into binge-watching harbor commission meetings. 

There has to be a redneck joke here somewhere?

First on the agenda was a Marine Activities Permit Application for SoCal Cycleboats Inc. A Cycleboat is a pontoon boat that is propelled by 10 patrons peddling, which turns the paddle wheel behind the boat. There has to be a redneck joke here somewhere? Not too sure how maneuverable and how quickly these babies can stop. Yet, I am not worried that you will see one planing down the middle of the harbor. My understanding is that this concept has done well on the Sacramento Delta. Personally, I would be surprised to see this idea work here in Duffyland. But hey, I never thought that windsurfing would catch on in the early eighties.

So, let’s get to the first part of the evening’s “meal” with Chris Miller, public works manager, with an update on the future of the Lower Bay dredging project. You are probably thinking, I thought we just did that? Well, that was the 2012 phase I. The 2021 phase II is penciled in to start once the city figures out where to find 23 million dollars. You might be thinking that finding the money was the dragon to slay; the real problem is disposing of the sediment which is estimated at 850,000 cubic yards. Of that 850,000, about 100,000 cubic yards is unsuitable material which is very difficult and expensive to dispose of. The options available at this time is an on-site sediment treatment facility, future port fill, upland landfill disposal, Long Beach CAD site, or creating a Lower Newport Bay CAD site. A CAD site is a Confined Aquatic Disposal plan by digging a hole in the harbor 450 feet by 450 feet and 47 feet deep. If I heard Miller correctly, this is not a new concept and is preferred by many government agencies. The CAD project is by far the best solution to this problem, although I feel there has to be a better place in the harbor rather than in the middle of the five points area. The time frame for this concept is 10 years for the CAD to be open which will allow marina and waterfront homeowners to dispose of any type of sediment. This will be a huge savings rather than barging the sediment out to sea. Other options for disposing of unsuitable material are not available in the near future, or just far too complex and expensive at this time. The CAD portion of the dredging project will be discussed in a public scoping meeting at 6 p.m. on December 4 in the Friends Meeting Room at Central Library. If you are a concerned harbor user, then this is the time to express your concerns to city staff.

Not to scale   Don Logan Photo

At first glance, my concern is where will the dredging equipment be kept when work is not being done? Will it stay onsite or will it be moved to a staging area? How much area will the dredging equipment cover? Having dredging equipment stationed at the proposed site for 10 years will disrupt many if not all of the harbor users I am in contact with every day.

Well, if the second course of the meal did not fill you up, let’s now move along to the next course of Proposed Changes to Title 17 Municipal/Harbor Codes, that our Harbor commissioners and City staff have spent 21 months reviewing and discussing with the community and the stakeholders of the harbor. The recommended changes to Title 17 will go in front of City Council for final review and a vote in the early part of next year. When opening this document, my attention span lasted for maybe 10 minutes, when I was quickly overcome by the 100+ pages of red lines. For the most part, the grumpy old man comes out in me, because I’m not always for change and certainly not recommending change by new city staff that has not been on our harbor for over a year. That is my first impression, then overnight I start to understand staff views and concerns better. Quite often I take the easy way out by paying closer attention to community activist Jim Mosher who always seems to recognize the devil in the details. From my observations, this topic needs about three more harbor activists similar to Mosher. In my simple world, these changes are similar to updating the Racing Rules of Sailing, which takes me two years to understand.

If you are looking for the recommended changes to Title 17, you can go to http://newportbeachca.gov/government/departments/harbor/harbor-commission/title-17-update then scan down to Working draft revisions.

At this point, it was 9:30 p.m. and I was full and could not take in another bite. Other items on the agenda included offshore mooring extensions, creating a subcommittee to work with other commissions to explore a community pool at Lower Castaways Park (don’t get me started now on this topic) along with commissioners and staff updates. I don’t intend to make light of what’s going on in the harbor at this time, so please take this as a call to action that your participation is needed now more than ever.

Sea ya!

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Len Bose is a yachting enthusiast, yacht broker and harbor columnist for Stu News Newport.