City wants a cleaner way to clean

Alex Coolman

NEWPORT BEACH -- It’s the dirty little secret of boating, and city

officials are trying to figure out how to clean it up.

Boat washing, an indispensable part of maintaining a vessel, is an

environmental trouble spot in Newport Beach.

The harbor is considered a “no discharge” body of water, which means

there technically aren’t supposed to be any discharges at all of impure

water from land.

Not water with a little oil or dirt in it. Not water with a little bit

of soap. According to the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board,

which regulates such things, these types of discharges are against the

rules.

But at a meeting at City Hall on Monday, city, county and water board

officials agreed the prohibitions, though well-intentioned, are too

severe to be followed very strictly.

“If they did enforcement [of the regulations] here, you could shut

down the entire economy of this city,” said Councilman Tod Ridgeway.

“Because it does revolve around the bay.”

Boat washing is crucial for boat owners because the crud that

accumulates on decks -- from bird droppings to jet fuel residue -- as

well as the marine slime that builds up on hulls, can quickly destroy

metal, plastic and wood.

“Ultimately,” said harbor master Marty Kasules, “all of these boats

have to be cleaned at one point or another.”

But cleaning a boat without breaking the law is a very touchy

enterprise. About the only way of doing things without violating the

Clean Water Act, said Wanda Smith, an environmental specialist with the

water quality control board, is for boat owners to clean their boats

themselves using deionized water and no detergent.

Anything more elaborate than that -- including the use of mild soap

and the hiring of professional cleaners to do the work -- theoretically

runs afoul of federal regulations, Smith said.

Fortunately, the board plans to emphasize education rather than

enforcement of these regulations, Smith said.

Deputy City Manager Dave Kiff said the city will likely take two steps

in the months ahead to assist with the effort to get boaters to clean

their vessels in an environmentally sensitive way.

First, Kiff said, the city will probably develop handout literature

that can be distributed to boaters, providing information about safe

soaps and the importance of preventing grease and oil from getting into

the harbor.

Additionally, he said, the city may also develop some type of

certification for the companies that clean boats professionally so that

such businesses are aware of the importance of being careful about

pollution.

“In the long term,” Kiff said, “if we want to change the law

[regarding washing] we’ve got to go through Congress. But in the short

term we’ve got to work on education.”