San Diego Bay Cleanup Delayed Again

By Ed Joyce / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published March 5, 2008 at 10:41 AM PST

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

An effort to clean up toxic sediment from part of the San Diego Bay has been delayed. A tentative order was issued three years ago requiring the polluted soil to be removed. But there's been no action

An effort to clean up toxic sediment from part of the San Diego Bay has been delayed. A tentative order was issued three years ago requiring the polluted soil to be removed. But there's been no action to clean up the area. KPBS reporter Ed Joyce has details.

Decades of industrial use near the waterfront has left a toxic soup of lead, arsenic and other metal compounds in soil at the bottom of the bay.

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The San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board three years ago ordered the $96 million clean-up of an area south of the Coronado Bridge.

But environmentalists question why it’s taken so long to remove nearly one million cubic-yards of polluted sediment.

Laura Hunter is with the Environmental Health Coalition .

Hunter : We don't even have a cleanup order at this point. We have a tentative cleanup order but we don't even have a direction from the board to clean up the bay.

Hunter says the water board’s decision to digitize all the evidence supporting the clean-up has caused delays.

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Several waterfront users may have to pay part of the removal costs including the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company , the city of San Diego, San Diego Gas & Electric and the Navy.

Ed Joyce, KPBS News.

Ed Joyce

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Ed Joyce was the environment reporter and afternoon news anchor for KPBS-FM. Before joining KPBS, he worked as an editor/columnist with Copley News Service in San Diego. Ed has an extensive background in newspaper, radio, web and TV journalism. After graduating with a B.A. in Communications from the University of Washington in Seattle, Ed began a career in broadcast journalism. His work has included stints in public broadcasting, commercial broadcasting and education -- working as an affiliate professor of communication and reporter at the University of Idaho and Washington State University in Pullman, Wash. During the past 20 years he has worked in radio, TV and print as a news reporter, anchor, writer, editor and producer. Along the way he has won numerous awards for general news reporting, newswriting, feature and issue reporting and breaking news reporting from The Associated Press, The Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego Press Club and other organizations. During the mid-1990s, while working for Oregon Public Broadcasting, he was a frequent contributor to National Public Radio, including a feature report on the memorial service for 14 U.S. Forest Service "hotshots" who died fighting a wildfire in Colorado (the crew was based in a central Oregon town). He’s also filed reports with Marketplace, KQED’s California Report and Climate Watch and with national and regional networks throughout the United States. At KPBS, Ed continues his contributions to National Public Radio and other national and regional news organizations. He has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and San Diego Press Club for his environmental reporting at KPBS-FM-TV and for producing and anchoring radio newscasts. In 2007 he was selected a National Press Foundation fellow for Understanding Violent Weather II program. The seminars were held at the National Weather Center in Norman, Okla. In 2008 he spoke at a UC San Diego conference on U.S. National Security as part of the school’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Ed led a discussion with the 18 foreign government officials and academics about the political debate over climate change. In 2010, Ed was elected to a three-year term on the board of the San Diego Press Club.

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