Bringing Back the Bay

The Back Bay, also called the Upper Newport Bay, is home to many

animals, plants and birds. Some of them, like in other nature

preserves throughout the county, are endangered. To help protect

them, groups like the Newport Bay Naturalists and Friends set out to

teach people and encourage them to do their part to avoid harming

that habitat.

The group, in concert with the state Department of Fish and Game,

the county and the city of Newport Beach, now wants to install raised

boardwalks to keep people from trails that end up stomping along

those habitats where the endangered species live.

On Tuesday, the Newport Beach City Council will consider the

$4-million restoration project that would be paid for in part with

about $800,000 from Orange County funds from the American Trader Oil

Spill Settlement and up to $4 million in state funds.

On Friday, City Editor James Meier discussed the Back Bay and the

proposed project at the Eastbluff home of Jack Keating, president of

the Newport Bay Naturalists and Friends.

What first sparked you to get involved in Back Bay matters?

Well, when we first moved here in 1964, one of the reasons I did

[move here] was because I was told by the real estate person that I

could walk to the boat marina from my house here in Eastbluff. And I

thought that was a pretty good idea. I did a lot of running along

Back Bay Drive and got interested, I guess as an engineer, how all of

these habitats and systems worked together.

Before I knew it, I was going through a course in the late 1980s

offered by the Department of Fish and Game to give people information

about the ecology of the bay so that they could become tour guides.

So I did that and joined this organization at that time. What I’ve

enjoyed most is leading kayak tours in the bay.

Tell me more about the Back Bay.

The heritage of our organization is a group called the Friends of

the Newport Bay, which was formed in 1969 to give people tours of the

bay and that organization really spearheaded the effort that finally

resulted in the decision to transfer the ownership from the Irvine

Co. to the state of California, or to Fish and Game in particular,

and the county of Orange.

So, our organization kind of carries on with that heritage. The

Newport Bay Naturalists then joined that group and we then called it

the Newport Bay Naturalists and Friends. All of the work of Frank and

Francis Robinson that preceded us in getting the bay transferred to

public ownership is really part of the heritage of what our

organization is all about.

So we feel that it’s our mission here to work with all of the

agencies involved from the standpoint of the entire bay, not just one

part -- the whole thing because it all needs to be treated as a

single system.

So we do the best we can to protect the bay, make sure that people

come to the bay in appropriate ways and receive the kind of education

they wish about what’s here in the bay -- the birds, the plants, the

animals, the ecology. And also to make sure that there are wonderful

facilities here, like the Peter and Mary Muth Interpretive Center, as

well as the Marine Studies Center.

Therefore, our job is to become stewards of the bay, working with

the Department of Fish and Game; the county Harbors, Beaches and

Parks; city of Newport Beach; the Coastal Commission. So we work in a

very collaborative way with all of those agencies. There’s just one

volunteer organization that’s doing that and that’s the Newport Bay

Naturalists and Friends.

So our job is to provide volunteers. The second part is to provide

money. We have a fairly aggressive fund-raising effort going on. And

the third thing is to kind of become the glue that helps hold this

whole thing together. We do have this thing I call the glue role.

So with that kind of a background, we can turn our attentions to

these restoration projects currently in the news. There are two of

them.

One of them is the Big Canyon Creek project, which was approved by

the City Council on Jan. 14, and that project will do some very

significant restoration work on roughly 58 acres. It’s just below

where the Big Canyon Golf Course is.

The second project is the West Bay project, which does include the

concept of a system of boardwalks in order to give people more access

along the water’s edge and some of the wetland areas. That decision

is up in front of the City Council on Tuesday, as a matter of fact.

Tell me more about the West Bay project.

The West Bay project is designed, basically, as a habitat

protection manager. Our concern is that there are a number of animals

in the bay and our major job is to protect the wildlife in the bay

and the habitats that provide sustenance for all of those animals. So

there are included in that mix several endangered species.

The birds we are concerned about are mostly the California clapper

rail and the Belding Savannah sparrow. The other endangered bird is

the least terns, but this particular project doesn’t have much of an

effect on that. We are worried about it, but not as part of this

project. And there’s a plant called the Salt Marsh Bird’s Beak, which

is very successful there.

Our job, first of all, is to do this job in a very sensitive way

to the environment. The phase of the project we’re moving into, which

is to the order of $400,000, is the planning phase. We’re working

with Community Conservancy International [CCI], an outstanding

nonprofit organization that’s in the business of doing this kind of

thorough planning work for organizations such as ours. We chose to

partner with CCI because they have the demonstrated expertise of

being able to carry these projects off in a very sensitive way.

So the purpose of this study phase is to really understand from a

scientific point of view exactly what these plants are, specifically

where they’re located on the entire West Bay side, and the

geo-technology of the situation. In other words, from a seismic point

of view, where would it be appropriate to put some raised pedestrian

platforms? Clearly, you need to put them along the water’s edge for

obvious reasons, not just so people won’t get their feet wet, but

also so the endangered animals, especially the clapper rail, which

has a major nesting area on that side of the bay. I would like to add

that there only a few more than 100 nesting pairs that are

successfully nesting anywhere in the world as far as we know and they

are here in the Upper Newport Bay.

The West Bay project is aimed at, first of all, making sure we

study exactly what can realistically be done and to come up with a

system of boardwalks and trails that fit in with the existing

boardwalks and trails. Up at the top, there’s a considerable length

of asphalted bike trails that stay in place.

So what we’re doing is, where we can, put in these elevated

platforms down lower along the water’s edge in order to give the

public much more complete access in places where we wish the public

could go so they can get to the salt marsh areas and see those parts

of the bay that are currently precluded from their ability to observe

it.

We’ll work into those elevated platforms and trails we’re

discussing a system whereby there will be nodes of information so the

public could go out there without a guide and get some real good

information about all of these endangered species and the other

activities going on.

What are some of the myths you may want to dispel about the

boardwalks?

Well, I guess the first myth is the feeling the boardwalks are

going to pave over the habitat. That’s certainly not the intent. The

boardwalk to some people might mean to some people, for example, the

boardwalk that runs along the ocean front. It’s paved and you can go

out there on bicycles, skateboards -- I guess the skateboards aren’t

allowed -- but it’s a very active place. Well, that’s not what we’re

talking about.

There’s a number of boardwalks that have been very successful in

other parts of the United States, Canada and, as a matter of fact,

the world. Part of the research CCI has done in terms of taking a

look at concepts that are viable is taking a look at all of the other

systems that have worked.

I want to point out, as this point, that part of the project will

include some public forums and sessions whereby all of the questions

the public has will be answered. I can assure you we can answer those

questions.

There are several people, based on letters to the editor that have

come into the Pilot, that are concerned about what is going on.

There’s a feeling we may be paving over that side of the bay and

that’s not the case.

There’s also information out there that we’re in the process of

removing some nonnative plants that some people think are important

to the bay. We need an opportunity to discuss that.

For example, pampas grass. I’d like to be able to talk to people

who think pampas grass is a useful plant in the habitat here at the

bay. They’re from Argentina. It’s used very successfully in the Rose

Parade. It has a beautiful blossom on it, but it has a prickly spine

on it and the birds can’t use it and it takes up an awful lot of

habitat.

One of the problems we have is that, to kill it, we use a poison

called Round-up. Round-up is good because it doesn’t affect the soil

or water table in any way. But when we kill the plant, it leaves this

ugly, big brown bush and the bush takes up a lot of valuable habitat

space. So what we need to do is to get more active in terms of

removing the remains of that plant after we kill it. That plant

really doesn’t do any good and it takes up an awful lot of space.

There’s also a myth that up on top of the bluff there’s a 2-mile

long boardwalk from 23rd Street to Jamboree or something like that.

And that’s not true either.

What are some of the plants there that are native to the Back Bay?

There’s the Salt Water Bird’s Beak. There’s the Baccharis, which

local lore calls mule fat, that are very numerous. There’s salt

bushes and salt grasses. There’s probably 80 different species of

plants. I’d like to invite the readers to come down to the bay to

take a tour with us to learn a lot more about that.

Any final thoughts?

The objective of what we’re doing here, with Big Canyon and the

West Bay projects, is to protect these endangered species and the

wetlands that are impacted by inappropriate public use.

The problem that we see on the west side is that there are a lot

of trails that are caused by use by the public over many, many years.

What we’re trying to do is provide places where people can and should

go.

And, at the same time, with an appropriate signage system, which

is a part of this project, is to make sure we can guide the public’s

presence on the habitat in appropriate ways. After this is done,

there will be a number of those trails that will clearly be off

limits.

We haven’t done a really good job in the past of providing this

kind of public access. For example, up on the west side of the bay,

there’s a number of kind of wired fences and nodes where people can

go and, quite frankly, they’re not very attractive. I’m sure they’re

not doing the habitat much good either.

So, in the long run, we intend to change that. We want to come up

with a system we put in place using the decomposed granite, which we

find a really good substance to use for the trails that are up on the

higher lands, and the system of boardwalks along the water’s edge and

then connect them in a way that is appropriate so we can keep people

off these other trails.

I know for a fact that, in 1964, when I moved here, I rode my bike

over there a lot and I’m sure I created a number of those trails

because, at that time, I was looking forward to the boat marina,

which thankfully never happened. I’m sure I was one of the culprits.

So we want to work hard on fixing that and putting in place a

system of signage that’s more user friendly -- signage that doesn’t

tell people always where they can’t go, but it tells them where

they’re encouraged to go.

So those trails we call rogue trails. I’ve heard illegal trail,

but I don’t particularly like that word. Rogue trail is a lot better

because it’s a trail that’s unintentionally created by people who

don’t know it’s important not to damage the habitat there.

So it’s the restoration of native vegetation, as well as the

repairing of bluff erosion, because all of the sediment from the

erosion ends up in the bay. There are a lot of water-quality issues

we’re working very hard on, too, that include trash, silt, nutrients,

pesticides, pathogens. All of those are threats to the bay as well as

people walking in unintentional places.

So we’re trying to get our arms around the whole situation. I can

tell you it’s both a terrific challenge and, to me, it’s a terrific

amount of fun.