City leaders vow to stop sewage dumping bill
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Paul Clinton
City leaders are hopping mad about a federal bill that could give
boaters the green light to dump partially treated sewage into Huntington
Harbour.
When told about the bill, introduced by Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.)
earlier this year, Mayor Debbie Cook said the proposal is absurd.
“Has [Saxton] ever taken a swim by the harbor,” Cook asked
rhetorically. “Why would anybody support such a thing.”
Saxton’s bill, introduced Feb. 5 and known as the Recreational Waters
Protection Act, would amend the Clean Water Act to do two things: revise
the standards for bacteria levels and allow boats equipped with a “marine
sanitation device” to unload their waste in protected water bodies.
The devices disinfect sewage by killing bacteria but not viruses.
A direct result of the bill’s passage would be the loss of the
harbor’s federal distinction as a “no-discharge harbor.”
The Environmental Protection Agency, in 1976, granted the harbor that
designation to prevent boaters from discharging their waste.
As the law now stands, boaters must use any one of a handful of “pump
out” stations to release their sewage.
Cook and other city leaders said they would kick-start efforts to
defeat Saxton’s bill.
“We’re going to mount an effort against it,” Councilman Ralph Bauer
said. “That’s a lot of nonsense.”
Bauer, who owns a boat and lives in the harbor, said he supports
fining boaters who empty their heads into the harbor.
The bill is the second incarnation of a Saxton proposal. The New
Jersey congressman, who lists boating as a hobby on his Web site,
introduced a similar bill on May 3, 2001. That bill died in committee.
The new bill has been referred to the water resources and environment
subcommittee.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) was traveling and could not
be reached, but press secretary Aaron Lewis said the bill isn’t the right
approach to protecting the nation’s harbors.
“Its intentions are good, but it’s pretty unrealistic,” Lewis said.
“There are better ways to go about ensuring water quality.”
Not surprisingly, environmentalists have also voiced their displeasure
about the bill.
Garry Brown, the executive director of Orange County CoastKeeper and
harbor resident, blasted the bill as a way to “totally diffuse” important
environmental legislation.
“It would be counterproductive,” Brown said. “[The Clean Water Act]
gives government the tools to clean up the problems.”
Last summer, Brown initiated a massive testing effort in the harbor as
a way to get it listed on a federal list of impaired water bodies.
Much of the harbor’s poor water quality can be traced to polluted
urban runoff brought in via several channels and a high number of “live
aboards,” people who pay little money to live on a boat.
Officials in Newport Beach are also fighting the bill, which would
also affect Newport Harbor and Upper Newport Bay. Mayor Tod Ridgeway
voiced opposition to the bill in a May 22 letter to Rep. Chris Cox
(R-Newport Beach).
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