Group Will Allow Dredge Dumping Off Palos Verdes
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In a setback for fishermen, the California Coastal Commission Wednesday approved an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to resume dumping port dredge material near a prime fishing area off the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
However, the fishermen will help police the dumping, and the commission, by a 10-1 vote, followed its staff’s recommendation that the term be limited to five years. It stipulated further that conditions be reported annually to determine impacts on the resource.
The anglers also hold out hope that a deep-water, non-fishing site four miles farther out, which they had proposed as an alternative, eventually will be accepted.
The EPA had sought a re-designation of the shallow-water “LA-2” area six miles south of San Pedro as an ocean dredged-material disposal site. It was used from 1977 to 1988, when an interim designation expired, after 1,616,200 cubic yards had been dumped, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That’s enough to fill the Rose Bowl 1 1/2 times.
LA-2 is about two miles from the Horseshoe Kelp, a major angling area for sportfishing and commercial fishermen.
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