A plan to dig an underwater pit the size of six football fields at the bottom of Newport Harbor and bury contaminated soil there is on hold, for now, pending a second look at environmental studies.
Amid multiple legal challenges over that proposal, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has suspended a permit it gave the city of Newport Beach for the project earlier this year. The agency also has committed to conduct additional analysis on the potential effects of the planned pit, spokesperson Stephen Baack said Tuesday.
In exchange, the nonprofit group Orange County Coastkeeper and a group of area residents known as Friends of Newport Harbor have agreed to pause their lawsuits against the agency.
The neighborhood group “is pleased that the Army Corps of Engineers is concerned about human health and the environment and responded to our plea for a revised environmental analysis,” organization president Shana Conzelman said.
The Army Corps doesn’t yet have an estimate for how long those studies will take, Baack said. That means there’s no clear timeline now for when overdue work to dredge the harbor and clear the way for boat traffic, which was supposed to kick off last fall, might happen or where any contaminated soil crews dig up might go if the underwater pit is ruled out as an option.
A progress report on that process is due in six months, according to a July 13 order from U.S. District Judge David Carter.
These plans have been in the works for nearly five years. And they’ve already cost the city, which recently filed to be an intervener in the Army Corps case, more than $2 million.
The federal government manages Newport Harbor and occasionally dredges accumulated sand and other debris from navigational channels that could otherwise pose problems for the more than 10,000 vessels based there. The last time most of the harbor was dredged was more than a decade ago. So early last year the Army Corps received permits to clear 879,900 cubic yards of…
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