PCBs and DDT in the H20

Andrew Edwards

Preliminary results from Rhine Channel testing show pollution levels

discovered in the waterway were consistent with scientists’

expectations.

“We saw what we were kind of expecting, which was heavy metals,

PCBs, some DDT,” said Steve Cappellino, a partner with Anchor

Environmental, the company tapped to test Rhine Channel sediments by

Orange County CoastKeeper. CoastKeeper is a water-quality watchdog

organization.

PCBs, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, are a

class of chemicals that were often used for fire prevention before

being banned in the 1976 federal Toxic Substances Control Act. The

chemicals have been proven to cause cancer and other harm to animals

and are possibly hazardous to people.

Exact levels of Rhine Channel pollution were not released because

testing results are still in the preliminary stages, Cappellino said.

Anchor Environmental scientists expected to find PCBs and heavy

metals, a class of metals that includes mercury and lead, because of

the area’s industrial history, Cappellino said. Rhine Channel, at the

west end of Newport Harbor, is a former cannery site and home to

Newport Beach’s shipbuilding companies.

The likely source of the pesticide DDT was runoff from

agricultural sites that washed into Newport Bay, Cappellino said.

A draft report containing proposals about decontaminating Rhine

Channel is expected to be ready by March 15, Orange County

CoastKeeper executive director Garry Brown said. More testing of the

area is planned before the report is published, Brown said.

The CoastKeeper wants to take a boat into the channel and dig out

another sediment sample that will be screened for sea life and

submitted to a lab for analysis to learn how the pollution has

affected creatures living in the channel.

“You get a complete picture of the channel and the life that’s in

the sediment,” he said.

The Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Board commissioned

CoastKeeper to oversee Rhine Channel testing and will have final

approval of any plan to improve water quality after it receives

public input on the report, said Wanda Marquis-Smith, chief of the

board’s coastal planning section.

So far, no money has been set aside by any governmental agencies

to clean Rhine Channel.

“There’s no particular responsible party that we can point to and

say, ‘You’ve got to clean this up,’” Marquis-Smith said.