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Wilson Scraps Bay Protection Program

With a stroke of the pen, Governor Wilson has sent the state's Regional Boards scrambling to complete clean-up plans for toxic hot spots in San Francisco and other California bays by the end of the year - long before needed studies of these sites are complete.

In October Wilson vetoed legislation that would have continued funding for the Bay Protection Toxic Cleanup Program, created in 1990 to identify, evaluate and monitor toxics in water, sediment and Bay-caught fish. The program had been supported by fees paid by municipal and industrial dischargers. Wilson also directed the Regional Boards to carry out the existing law, which requires that clean-up plans be delivered to the State Board by January 1st.

"This was never anticipated," says the S.F. Regional Board's Karen Taberski, noting that a 1995 implementation plan produced by the State Board directed the Regional Boards to focus on data collection and monitoring rather than developing clean-up plans through the end of 1997. Indeed, Taberski is just finishing up a painstaking three-year effort to develop scientifically sound toxicity testing protocols and reference sites. She has screened 150 suspected toxic hot spots using the new methods.

Taberski says that under standard procedures, once a contaminated site is identified, additional studies are conducted to determine the aerial extent of the contamination and clean-up feasibility - a process that can take an additional three to 10 years. Only after these studies are complete would a clean-up plan be developed. "We've been given just ten weeks," says Taberski.

In his veto letter, the governor criticized the program's approach to human health risk assessments - a claim that Save the Bay's Keith Nakatani dismisses as "completely insupportable." Nakatani says he believes that the reason for the veto was that "this legislation would have put teeth in the program and forced big dischargers to do some real cleanup." M'K Veloz of the Northern California Marina Association says her members "fully support the governor's logic."

As a result of the accelerated time-frame, Taberski says the clean-up plans will consist primarily of options such as capping or dredging contaminated sites. Where responsible parties can be identified, the Regional Board will require them to conduct aerial extent and feasibility studies, and develop clean-up plans themselves.

According to the State Board's Gita Kapahi "the plans that the Regional Boards provide at the end of the year will be proposed plans that will satisfy the law, but they will not be considered complete until the State Board adopts them." The Board has until June 1999 to develop a final clean-up plan for the entire state. In the meantime, additional data that has already been gathered will be analyzed and incorporated in the plans. The governor has ordered the State Board to draw up a budget proposal to keep the program afloat for the next year and complete the clean-up plans, although precisely where these funds might come from is still unknown.

"The law is specific about what the plans must include and these plans are going to have big holes in them," says Save the Bay's Nakatani. "We are skeptical that they will be able to fill those holes in one year."

Contact: Gita Kapahi (916)657-0883

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