The Port of San Diego has a list of ambitious projects, both pending and ongoing. The projects are designed to improve the look and function of port tidelands with money from the Port’s environmental fund. Last year’s environmental fund totaled about $600,000 ” about the same as this year ” and represents about a half-percent of the Port’s total budget, officials said.
One project slated for the early part of the year includes landscaping for about 17 grassy areas along the tidelands, North Bay and Harbor Island intersections. The project went out for bid at the end of January. The company that is awarded the contract will be charged with coming up with the design for the areas, to be approved by the Board of Port Commissioners. This would replace the current greenery with plants and grass that do not need as much water to survive, said Marguerite Elicone, Port of San Diego representative. The project would cost about $100,000, she said.
The Port would also be working with Scripps Institution of Oceanography to expand on a geological survey conducted in 2005 that mapped fault-line activity from just south of the Coronado Bridge to North Harbor Drive. This second part of the study would map the entire San Diego Bay and cost about $150,000, she said.
“[The study] is not required. We just want to go above and beyond compliance,” Elicone said.
The Port is currently negotiating the details of the next step in the study so it is unclear when the it will begin, she said.
The 2005 study used 3-D technology to shed light on the movement of bedrock and sediment affected by past dredging and natural movements beneath one of San Diego’s most crucial economic engines, according to the report.
The projects supported by the Port’s environmental fund follow a string of efforts to clean the bay. The Port also put money toward platform osprey nesting sites last November. The large birds use high-top nesting sites such as boat masts, tall trees and poles, Elicone said.
The Port also launched efforts in December to clean up the A-8 anchorage in the southern part of the bay. The $42,000 project to clear that section of the bay of large debris should be completed this month.
According to the Port of San Diego Web site, more than $246,000 will be spent over the next three years to improve the environmental quality of the bay, which historically has been, and continues to be, polluted by human activity.