Study will get to core of channel’s condition

Alicia Robinson

In the name of research, scientist David Keith ignored the rotten-egg

smell wafting from a column of sludgy matter pulled from the Rhine

Channel on Wednesday.

Keith is one of several people working to gather samples from the

channel for a landmark study that Newport Beach-based environmental

group Orange County Coastkeeper is heading up.

The $346,000 study aims to discover what kind of pollution is in

the Rhine Channel and how best to clean it up. Once home to a fish

cannery, and still the site of shipyards, the channel is full of

contaminants and debris. In 1998, it was designated a toxic hot spot

by the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board.

“There’s actually been some studies on the surface, so we know

there’s contamination on the surface,” Orange County Coastkeeper

project manager Ray Hiemstra said. “The main difference here is the

depth [of the testing].”

Coastkeeper began collecting data for the study in August.

Wednesday and today, Coastkeeper and scientists like Keith, from

Anchor Environmental, an Irvine firm hired for the study, are

extracting samples of sediment from the channel.

Project workers are drawing out 16 core samples, which are taken

from a boat by pushing a clear tube into the soft sediment at the

bottom of the channel until it hits the hard, sandy, uncontaminated

layer below silt and pollutants that have accumulated in the 80 years

since the channel was last dredged.

Scientists aren’t dismayed by the sulfur smell or brownish, oily

appearance of the samples when they cut the tube open, Keith said.

“When it’s dark gray or black like this, it means there is no

oxygen [in it], which is what you would expect in a setting like

this,” he said.

The scientists take sections of the samples, stir them in metal

bowls and plop some of the muddy mixture into jars that are sealed

and stored on ice. Most of the jars will be sent to a San Francisco

lab to be tested for a variety of pollutants, and a few will go

elsewhere for geological tests.

For the pollutant testing, part of the sediment sample is heated

to a high temperature until it turns into gases, which can be

identified by their different weights, Anchor Environmental scientist

Jody Edmunds said.

Test results should be back within two weeks, and Anchor will

submit a report four to six weeks later, she said.

Coastkeeper expects to produce a final report on what’s in the

Rhine Channel, how to clean it up and how much it will cost in April

2005. A 1998 analysis estimated cleanup at close to $10.6 million.

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

She may be reached at (714) 966-4626 or by e-mail at

[email protected].