Watchdog group plans airport study

Alicia Robinson

Balboa Island residents expect to regularly wash black soot from

their cars and boats, and they assume it’s spewed by the jets that

take off from and land at John Wayne Airport.

Soon they may know for sure. Newport Beach-based water-quality

watchdog Orange County Coastkeeper is about to study air quality at

John Wayne Airport and how it affects Newport Harbor.

A team of scientists and environmental policy experts, led by

Coastkeeper Executive Director Garry Brown, plans to begin meeting

June 22 to start designing the two-year study. The project is likely

to cost between $200,000 and $300,000 but is not yet funded,

Coastkeeper project manager Ray Hiemstra said.

Surprisingly few studies have been done on the environmental

effects of jet fumes, but one study in Seattle linked jet exhaust to

some cancers, he said.

“We’re not taking any side on this. We’re not saying there is an

impact,” Hiemstra said. “All we know is that we don’t know.”

Coastkeeper will raise money to pay for the study and will hire an

environmental consultant to collect the data. The advisory team

includes officials from the South Coast Air Quality Management

District, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Southern

California Coastal Water Research Project.

The city of Newport Beach isn’t involved in the study but will

likely be interested in its outcome.

“You can come to Balboa Island any day of the week and hose down

black soot from the sidewalk, from the cars, from the boats, and I

suspect it’s coming from the airplanes, from spent fuel,” Newport

Beach Mayor Steve Bromberg said.

All that soot is getting washed from boats into the bay, but it’s

also probably landing directly in the water, Bromberg said.

But the challenge for the study will be to figure out whether

pollution is coming from the airport -- and if so, how much. John

Wayne Airport spokeswoman Courtney Wiercioch said preliminary

findings of a 1993 study “found no problems in the vicinity of the

airport. Air quality was consistent with what would be expected in a

coastal environment.”

Under a microscope, jet exhaust looks the same as emissions from

diesel trucks, said Sam Atwood, spokesman for the South Coast Air

Quality Management District.

“It’s very difficult to tease out what is coming from the airport

versus the surrounding area, and it’s, at this point, pretty much

scientifically impossible to identify, for example, what is jet

aircraft exhaust,” he said.

Hiemstra said Coastkeeper will also seek public participation, and

public support to raise money for the study.