Bad paint job

Deepa Bharath

NEWPORT HARBOR -- Safety officials said they do not know how marine

life will be affected by 30 gallons of fluorescent green paint that was

poured into the bay near the Balboa Fun Zone on Thursday.

The paint, Nocturn, is water-based and used for games at Dr.

Bizarro’s, an arcade in the area, said Randy Scheerer, training chief for

the Newport Beach Fire and Marine Department.

“They apparently used it to fill bottles in ring-the-bottle games,” he

said. “They dumped it in the drain thinking it’s just a dye.”

The owner of the arcade declined to comment.

A city vacuum truck was called in to suck up about two gallons of the

paint that lay stagnant on Palm Street.

The paint will be analyzed by state Department of Fish and Game

officials to determine if it is hazardous to the environment, Scheerer

said. The severity of any penalties for the arcade will depend on the

results of the analysis.

“If [the results] prove to be harmless, then there’s no question,” he

said. “But if there are harmful substances in the paint, they can face

pretty hefty fines.”

Cleaning up the remnants of Thursday’s spill was impossible, Scheerer

said. The paint, being water-based as opposed to oil-based, was quickly

diluted in the bay and hardly visible.

“There’s absolutely no way to get it out of the ocean,” he said.