Newport Beach approves plans to send contaminated dredging sediment to Long Beach for pier extension project

The Newport Beach City Council may have ended years of back and forth over the disposal of contaminated sediment dredged from Newport Harbor after approving a plan Tuesday to use it for a pier extension project in Long Beach.

The move is similar to how the city handled the muck scooped up when the Rhine Channel was dredged in 2013. But Long Beach had no use for more sediment a few years later, when Newport Beach officials working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were planning the following round of dredging.

In 2021, the City Council approved the construction of a contained aquatic disposal facility (CAD) in Newport Harbor. That would have entailed digging a 47-foot deep hole underwater between Lido Isle and Bay Island to hold roughly 191,000 cubic yards of sediment and then burying it.

A rendering of what the proposed confined aquatic dredged disposal site will look like.

(Courtesy of the city of Newport Beach)

The sediment has been described as nontoxic by city officials. But it has tested positive for trace amounts of mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the pesticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) and other chemicals.

The project drew resistance from local environmental groups, who note that it could impact the habitats of sea turtles and other protected species. A lawsuit filed by Orange County Coastkeeper put it on hold in 2022 “while the Corps considers revisiting its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analyses and Endangered Species Act (ESA) analyses, including whether consultation under the ESA is appropriate.”

A green sea turtle at Living Coast Discovery Center in 2022. The sea creatures are among protected species known to inhabit Newport Harbor.

(Courtesy of Living Coast Discovery Center)

Plans for the CAD stalled. In the meantime, Long Beach approved plans to extend one of the piers at their port, creating a use for sediment from Newport Beach.

The two cities began working out a deal in early 2024, and the Corps characterized the pier extension as a viable, preferred option. On Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously to move forward with the plan as part of the meeting’s consent calendar.

“I just want to give a lot of credit to our staff,” Mayor Joe Stapleton said Tuesday, singling out Chris Miller, the public works manager, Dave Webb, the public works director and the city’s harbormaster, Paul Blank. “You guys put yeoman’s effort into this; way to carry this. A lot of community support went into this.”