Bay’s Future Rests on Port District Appointments : Environment: New commissioners could ensure that San Diego’s tidelands are cleaned up, restored and protected.

San Diego Bay is a key economic and environmental feature of the region. But the bay’s reputation as a polluted waterway attests to decades of exploitation. An opportunity is now at hand to see that environmental protection of the bay and its special natural resources are better represented and its potential to serve all the people of San Diego is more fully realized.

The San Diego City Council will be making a critical decision shortly on whom to appoint to two of the most important and powerful positions in the state of California--commissioners to the San Diego Unified Port District. The Port District has authority over nearly all the tidelands in San Diego Bay. This decision takes on even more importance given the numerous challenges ahead for the commission.

The rush to develop bayfront acreage is accelerating amid evidence of 22 contaminated underground water sites in downtown San Diego alone. The new Convention Center along with other construction projects have intruded into these underground basins, and the sites may be drawing toxic contaminants toward the bay.

Within the next few years, the fate of critical natural wetlands in the vast southern part of San Diego Bay must be weighed against development. There are proposals driven by very narrow special interests to build a second harbor entrance. And San Diego may be the host in defending the America’s Cup, which would bring an unprecedented number of new tenants and visitors to the bay as early as November.

It is time that the City Council and all San Diegans look to the future of our great bay and the challenge that lies ahead: to clean up, restore and protect San Diego Bay as a multi-use resource.

The Port District has the statutory responsibilities to promote navigation, commerce, recreation and fisheries.

In the last two areas, a lot more can and will have to be done if we are to even approach the goal set by the federal Clean Water Act nearly 20 years ago to make this waterway “fishable and swimmable.” The expenditures and progress toward promoting fisheries and water-contact recreation in the 27 years since the Port District’s creation has been disappointing.

For instance, commercial fishermen report a significant diminishment in the numbers of fish and the diversity of species in the bay. And many of the fish they do find have tumors, lesions and evidence of other problems with their bay-water habitat.

More importantly, the chairman of a port commission subcommittee recently announced that bay water quality posed a negligible risk to human health from water-contact activities such as swimming. However, this was based on surveys of information and studies available on just two pollutants in the bay--copper and tributyltin. Both pollutants have been used as anti-fouling agents in boat-bottom coatings, and copper has been spilled in huge quantities as a result of seven years of loading at the Port District’s National City 24th Street Terminal, which was leased to a private company.

This spill of copper resulted in the state naming the Port District a primary-responsible party in the pollution of the bay. In fact, the Port District has been named as a primary- and secondary-responsible party in a number of orders to clean up toxic pollution of the bay. And the state now designates the port as a responsible party for all of its tenants who have pollution-discharge permits.

It is more than a little odd to have an agency that has been charged with polluting this important resource able to pass judgment on water quality and human health, especially given the complexity of this issue and the need for more information about the extent of contamination and its effects on the bay food chain.

The Port District has even declared the health risk from toxic contaminants in Convair lagoon as minimal, and yet this area has been posted for nearly two years with warning signs by the county Department of Health Services. Convair lagoon has sediments containing some of the highest concentrations of PCBs on the West Coast. Professor Jack Conway, a member of one of the Port District’s toxic waste advisory subcommittees, echoed the comments of other committee members when he said it was “premature to make statements about the bay until all the data is in.”

At the same time that the public is being assured that there is little risk to swimming in the bay, the Crosby Street park in Barrio Logan is off limits to water-contact activities and fishing.

The Port District is paying for a health risk assessment study, which is being conducted by county Department of Health Services. But the scope of the study will be limited by the funding: $250,000. This is a minimal amount contrasted with the port’s annual budget of $80 million, with $162 million in reserves. Surely some greater portion of these monies should be devoted to clean-up, protection and restoration.

The Port District will not meet its statutory responsibilities by wishful thinking and half-hearted support for the many studies and programs needed to protect San Diego Bay.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor listed San Diego Bay and reforms to the Port District at the top of the list for the “environmental protection package” attached to her recent State of the City address: “The Port Act must be reviewed to assign environmental protection and preservation a higher priority, instead of an afterthought to economic development.”

This is a fitting call to action for this new decade and the 20th anniversary of Earth Day. We hope that the City Council will bear this in mind as it considers the qualifications of the growing list of candidates to serve as new port commissioners. With the Exxon Valdez undergoing repairs here in San Diego Bay as a reminder of how fragile our marine environment is, the San Diego City Council should be searching for commissioners with an understanding of natural-resource issues and a real dedication and commitment to clean up, restore and protect this great bay for all San Diegans to enjoy.

We can’t afford to let this critical opportunity fall to political expediency. We need a clean sweep of the past for a clean bay in the future.