Dredging to receive $2.87M

More than $3 million in federal funds are earmarked for the Newport-Mesa area in the omnibus budget signed by President Obama.

The bulk of the money, $2.87 million, will go toward dredging the Upper Newport Bay, while $447,000 is headed to Costa Mesa’s Vanguard University to buy equipment, according to federal government documents.

Half a million dollars will also go toward a project to replenish sand on the coast north of Newport Beach, but some of the sand will eventually flow down the coast, providing necessary reinforcement for Newport’s shores, according to Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff.

The $410-billion omnibus spending bill, which Obama called “imperfect,” was widely criticized for having close to 9,000 earmarks, which account for about 1% of the bill.

Obama stressed that all earmarks are not inherently bad, but pledged to subject future earmarks to closer scrutiny.

The Newport Beach dredging project has continued for more than three years with funding from both the federal and local governments to remove silt and sand that contains pollutants dangerous to marine wildlife from the bay.

The new funding from the omnibus budget, requested by Reps. Ed Royce, Ken Calvert and Loretta Sanchez, will chip away at the project’s estimated total price of $48.5 million, but $13 million is still necessary to carry it to completion, officials said.

Newport Beach sent representatives to Washington last week to try to fund the rest of the project with money from Obama’s stimulus package.

“We have our fingers crossed that the [Army Corps of Engineers] has successfully asked for stimulus funding in addition to this so that we could complete the project this year,” Kiff said.

The money set aside at the request of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher for Vanguard — a small, Christian college next to Costa Mesa’s City Hall — has not been formally allocated to a specific project yet, university officials said.

Before a check is cut, administrators and teachers need to sit down and make an itemized list of requests and pass it on to the government for final approval.

“At this stage my guess is it’s for equipment for academic programs and science,” said Professor Cecil Miller.

Reporter ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected]. Reporter ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].