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A Tale of Three Harbors
Those in the nation's inner dredging circles have long extolled the Army Corps' "PSSDA" program in Washington's Puget Sound as the shining star of public-private cooperation in solving dredging problems and balancing environmental and shipping concerns. Conversely, those writing the front pages of Eastern newspapers describe New York harbor as "choking in mud....and locked in debate with beachfront communities, fishermen and environmental groups who oppose any further disposal of tainted silt in the ocean." As San Francisco Bay begins to to nail down a regional solution to its own dredged material disposal problems (see insert), a comparison with the two other ports reveals the terra firma ahead and the quicksand behind.
"New York's stuck where Puget and San Francisco started out," says the Bay Commission's Steve Goldbeck. Back to the 1980s, the two Pacific ports experienced sudden shut downs of primary dredged material disposal sites due to fishery and environmental concerns. More recently, New York's Mud Dump, the region's disposal mainstay, became off limits to over two thirds of the New York area's dredged material due to new and tougher EPA toxicity tests for ocean dumping.
While the origins of this "mudlock" in the three ports may be similar, the politics, timing and disposal demand have all been different. Puget Sound began is mudbreak back in 1985 in a liberal and "environmentally interested era," according to the Seattle Army Corps' Stephanie Stirling. By the time San Francisco began its effort in earnest in 1990 the era had a more economic flavor. Important fisheries and major port upgrades were at stake and warring interests had become entrenched. But "once everyone realized we were all holding guns to each others heads we started to negotiate," says Goldbeck.
New York, according to its Port Authority's Tom Wakeman, doesn't have the multi-interest "desire" for consensus that San Francisco has. "For us it's more a matter of political will, of looking for the biggest voting coalition, of allaying public fears about dredged material ending up on their beaches." In addition, Wakeman says no one in the two-state New York/New Jersey port seems to be willing to be responsible for disposal of anyones' dredged mud but their own. He says New York is just barely beginning to consider the kind of "regional" strategy for dredged material management that Puget has and San Francisco's hatching.
Other key differences between the three ports have influenced the relative success of their dredging programs. Puget may be a shining star, but it also has the cleanest mud on average, the naturally deepest channels and the least amount of material to dredge. Puget dredges around 700,000 cubic yards per year, New York around four million and San Francisco around six. Puget's about as clean as any urban harbor region gets while San Francisco's contaminant levels are middling and New York's more often than not off the charts. "There was a heavy concentration of people, industry and sewage outfalls here for a hundred years before San Francisco came of age," says Wakeman.
"What we hear is that our dirty sites are New York's clean reference sites," says Goldbeck, "that their mud is black mayonnaise."
The degree of sediment contamination, and the heavily developed nature of the greater New York area, narrow the region's disposal options. There are no nearby diked baylands perfect for politically-correct wetland restoration reusing clean dredged material as in San Francisco Bay. Engineering fill for a parking lot is more along the reuse lines for New York. For the rest, Wakeman is looking at constructing containment islands and/or underwater pits where contaminated material could be capped. But none of these options are up and running yet. Indeed New York's recently had to send 150,000 cubic yards of contaminated dredged material all the way to a Utah dump - pricetag $18 million (or $118 per cubic yard, as compared to Mud Dump's $5 bucks a yard).
By way of rough comparison (cost estimates vary wildly in their assumptions), "chemically-challenged" Oakland mud from a recent harbor deepening went to a local golf course site for $22 a cubic yard while cleaner material went to the ocean at around $8 and into a wetland restoration at around $10. Puget's average disposal costs per cubic yard are $3-5.
While New York remains in mudlock, San Francisco is moving toward regional consensus on a blend of beneficial reuse and Bay and ocean disposal, and the Puget Sound is happily humming along with the eight aquatic disposal sites it established under its regional program in 1988 and 1989. But all three regions, at whatever stage, are basically finding the same thing, according to Wakeman. "It's not the environment or the economy, it's the environment and the economy," he says. "Favoring either one is a disaster for both in the long run."
"What really makes things work is accountability," says Sterling, whose federal agency takes the lead on dredging programs across the nation and has at times been perceived as irreverent of Nature. But the Corps' eleven-year-old model Puget program reports to the public on its activities at an annual review meeting every year. Sterling says the environmental groups don't even show up at these meetings anymore. "Trust is something you earn," she says.
As Goldbeck sees it, San Francisco's already been in New York's muddy boots and doesn't want to go back. "We're nearing a solution," he says. "I hope we achieve the acceptance and satisfaction in both the environmental and economic camps that Puget's program has earned."
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