A follow-up to yesterday’s Throwing Copper story…
The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Board unanimously approved a controversial set of regulations that will launch the first extensive pollution cleanup in Marina del Rey history, county officials said.
At a meeting downtown Thursday night, the local board voted 6 to 0 to approve amendments to a pollution plan that that will force more than 4,000 boaters to strip copper paint off their boats at personal expense. Los Angeles County will also be given the task of cleaning or covering more than 200 acres of toxic sediment.
The water board estimates the cost of paint stripping an average-size boat at $6,000. Dredging the entire marina could cost close to $200 million, while covering the marina with a layer of fresh sediment would cost far less, about $19 million. It is unclear where the funding for either method would come from, but boaters feared that it would somehow be passed along to them.
The plan sparked a revolt from many longtime boaters, who said they resent being forced to take action that they believe won’t solve the marina’s copper problem. So many stakeholders packed the meeting room Thursday that about an hour into public comment, an official announced that there were still 80 requests to speak and the time allotted to each speaker would be reduced, an official at the meeting said.
