Boating Plan Could Face Environmental Opposition

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

September 6 -- One day before the Pier Board shoves off with a plan to bring boating back to the wooden landmark for the first time in two decades, an influential environmental group is warning the City could be entering murky waters.

Heal the Bay’s Executive Director Mark Gold said Tuesday that the City’s plan to bring boating along a proposed gangway flanking the pier would further contaminate one of the state’s five most polluted beaches.

“When it comes to a harbor at the pier, my position remains the same as it has been for the last 10 years on the issue,” said Mark Gold, a 14-year member of the City’s Sustainable Task Force.

“Until beach water quality at the pier is actually beach water quality standard, the thought of adding potential new sources of pollution to the pier doesn’t make sense,” Gold said.

Gold’s comments to The Lookout come one day before the Pier Board votes to search for a firm to build the wooden gangway before any environmental studies are conducted for the project.

Approved by the City Council last month, the gangway would bring some form of boating back to the pier after winter storms splintered the structure more than 20 years ago, permanently marooning mariner activities at the popular tourist site.

While Heal the Bay officials said they are working “very closely” with the City on any plan, water quality around the pier will need to meet the State’ watermark before it will receive the influential non-profits’ approval, Gold said.

“The City needs to demonstrate that they can clean up the beaches there before I think they move forward to do this,” he said.

Pier officials say that launching some form of boating is a “key component” of the gangway, which could be completed in as little as three years.

“We see it as an important way for people to interact with the ocean around them,” said. Ben Franz Knight, CEO of the non-profit Pier Restoration Corporation.

It is also a way to potentially draw more visitors to the large structure’s wooden planks.

Boating could be a way to tap an additional revenue stream for the financially struggling pier, which is being kept afloat by City funds, Franz-Knight told the council.

While City and Pier officials have yet to decide what type of boating would be allowed and how the boating activities would be conducted, Franz-Knight said he and the board envision a “green harbor” without permanent moorings.

“There would be no parking spaces for boats,” he said, adding that boats may dock south of Santa Monica and pick up tourists near the pier for bay tours or water taxis.

The City may balk at activities such as using two-stroke jet skis or other personal water vehicles, Franz-Knight suggested, adding that he has also floated other ideas, including using biodiesal to fuel the boats.

“I think everyone agrees we don’t want to do anything that makes pollution worse at the pier,” he said, noting that the PRC often works closely with Heal the Bay to help set sound environmental policy.

But no matter how environmentally friendly the plan, Gold said, any boating could potentially harm waters around the pier, whose underwater ecosystem is already battling a host of pollutants.

In addition to pollution generated by the nearly three million annual visitors to the popular landmark, the pier already faces pollution from countless sea birds that nest beneath the pier and, most dramatically, from storm-water which surges into the Bay from inland, Gold said.

“The main thing we need to cut is the bacteria,” Gold said.

Years of efforts to clean up Santa Monica Bay are paying off, he said, noting that there are no longer “dead zones” in the middle of the bay. However, much work is needed to finish the job.

“I’m very fond of saying we’re half way there to healing the bay,” he said.

Measure V on the local ballot this November will increase taxes for residents to improve storm-water projects, Gold said.

For a chance to weigh in on boating activities and the gangway construction, members of the public can attend a special meeting of the Pier Board Wednesday at 5 p.m. at the Carousel Building, 200 Santa Monica Pier, which includes a tour, followed by the regulatr meeting at the Ken Edwards Center, 1527 4th Street, at 7 p.m. (see agenda)