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Port details tainted-dirt sales Changes Promised

Published in the Stockton Record on 12/19/04

Port details tainted-dirt sales
Changes promised

By Dana Nichols - Record Staff Writer

Published Sunday, December 19, 2004

STOCKTON -- The Port of Stockton has changed its strategy for coping with demands from water-pollution regulators and this month provided information first asked for six months ago.

The port now is also vowing to conduct lab tests on dredge spoils and get permission before selling the dirt for any uses.

The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board has its eyes on the port, because those dredge spoils contain potentially toxic metals like nickel, lead, copper and chromium. Under the right conditions, those metals can leach out and pollute waterways. Even very low levels of some metals can kill organisms living in water.

The port's new efforts come as the water board has increasingly scrutinized port plans to dredge a section of the Stockton Deep Water Channel around Rough and Ready Island. Port officials have said the dredging plans are crucial if the port's shipping operations are to expand.

Water board scientists demanded information on the port's sales of the dirt after 52,120 cubic yards of it used to repair a Delta levee in June turned out to be laden with metals. The levee along Trapper Slough is now the target of pollution-containment efforts.

But July passed, and the port did not turn in the information on where and how the spoils had been used in the past year, said Bill Marshall, a section chief for the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control board.

The deadline was extended, but the report didn't come in August, either. Then September and October passed, too.

Representatives of Jones & Stokes Associates, the consulting firm the port hired to work on the problem, continued to promise the report but never turned it in, Marshall said.

Jones & Stokes representatives said both in media interviews and in a letter to the water board in March that the dredging spoils were clean and suitable for "all reuse activities."

Also, until recently, the port did not track how the dredge spoils it sold were used, something that water regulators say it should have been doing all along.

Then, in November, the port hired a new consulting firm, Environmental Risk Services Corp., which has offices in Stockton, Danville and Alamo.

Port Director Richard Aschieris said he hired ERS to help the port comply with the water board's rules. And he said that Jones & Stokes consultants continue to do much of the port's environmental work.

"We have just asked Mr. (Mark) O'Brien (of ERS) to come in like an environmental auditor and take a close, scientific look at what was being done," Aschieris said.

Also in November, the port got a warning letter from the board and quit selling the dirt for any use.

On Dec. 10, ERS turned in the long-awaited report, about six months after it was first requested.

Marshall said he's seen a change since ERS has been on the job.

"They have really been beating a trail to our door and telling us they want to get the information into us," Marshall said.

And it appears that ERS representatives and water officials have similar ideas about finding a long-term solution to the problem of disposing of dredging spoils.

"There is a general thought that the methodology that we are using is too conservative. We tend to be conservative because we want to protect water quality," Marshall said. "Unfortunately, we are getting to the point now where dredging in the Delta is very difficult to do because of this."

Many officials at agencies that maintain Delta levees suspect that virtually all dredged dirt from the region will contain at least some of the metals that caused problems at Trapper Slough. They have been piling the same muck on the region's levees for years.

Marshall said he plans to meet soon with representatives of the Army Corps of Engineers and others to discuss how to resolve the present standoff between water-pollution rules and the need to dredge channels and maintain levees in the Delta.

At stake is the port's ability to maintain the shipping channel for its existing business and to complete a planned expansion -- for which it already has a permit -- by dredging near Rough and Ready Island. Without being able to dispose of dredging spoils, the port would eventually run out of space to place new dredge material.

Also, reclamation districts depend on dredged material to maintain and strengthen levees. And that is of concern not just to farmers behind the levees, but to the entire state, since the collapse of levees and flooding of Delta islands could threaten the water supply for a majority of Californians.

Marshall said a starting point would be to figure out what the levels of toxic metals are in existing levees and waterways.

O'Brien said he, too, wants to do a similar study and already has lined up an ERS staffer, geologist Steven Michelson, to lead it.

"If there is a story within a story, that is the story," O'Brien said.

"This is a major issue for the entire region. That is the critical piece in my mind to all this. There are no baselines out there for us to compare. There are tremendous ramifications for this if this isn't solved and isn't solved soon," he said.

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* To reach reporter Dana Nichols, phone (209) 546-8295 or e-mail dnichols@recordnet.com

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