Coastkeeper to focus on runoff

Andrew Edwards

Orange County Coastkeeper officials plan to redirect the group’s

water-quality efforts toward inland counties in a move that will also

have the group significantly reducing its involvement in kelp

reforestation efforts.

“The kelp project will continue, but it won’t get the kind of

energy and resources as it has in the past,” said Jim Parkhurst,

president of Orange County Coastkeeper’s board of directors. “Those

energies will be redirected inland.”

Parkhurst and Garry Brown, the group’s executive director, said

they want to pay more attention to building and development in the

Inland Empire because runoff caused by projects in that area can

travel down the Santa Ana River watershed to Newport Harbor.

“The closer we can move this to the source, we can leverage

ourselves by at least 10 times,” Parkhurst said.

The group plans to open a new Inland Empire office to go along

with its redirection, Brown said. He expects his branch’s board of

directors will select the location for a new office in May.

Coastkeeper started its work on kelp reforestation in 2001, but

Brown said his group has decided to turn that project over to the

California Coastkeeper Alliance, which coordinates work done by

California members of the International Waterkeeper Alliance.

“I don’t want to abandon kelp, but we can’t do it all,” Brown

said, adding that his group would be responsible for monitoring

already-planted kelp for five years.

Brown pulled Coastkeeper out of the California Coastkeeper

Alliance in March, he said. He said his decision to leave the

alliance was partly because of plans to refocus efforts inland and

would not comment on other reasons for leaving.

Three full-time Coastkeeper employees, including marine biologist

Nancy Caruso, were laid off as part of Coastkeeper’s new plans, Brown

said. Caruso was in charge of the group’s kelp reforestation efforts.

Caruso said she was laid off March 22, and was told Coastkeeper

wanted to move away from the kelp project.

“They said they didn’t want to do it anymore; they wanted to go in

a different direction,” she said.

The staffing changes were not related to Brown’s recent

resignation from his part-time position with Newport Beach lobbying

firm, Iger & Associates, Parkhurst said.

“This is something that we had under discussion for at least six

months,” Parkhurst said.

In 2004, Coastkeeper received a three-year grant renewal from the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for kelp

reforestation, and Caruso said she worried money for the project

could be at risk without Orange County Coastkeeper’s involvement.

“If you change your proposal in the middle of the project, that

kind of jeopardizes your funding,” Caruso said.

Linda Sheehan, executive director of the California Coastkeeper

Alliance, said she is working on having grant money reassigned to the

alliance.

“My hope and my expectation is the project in Orange County will

go on,” Sheehan said. “It will be just be transferred to the

California Coastkeeper Alliance.”

* ANDREW EDWARDS covers business and the environment. He can be

reached at (714) 966-4624 or by e-mail at andrew.edwards

@latimes.com.