BILL PEARL OF LBREPORT.COM ASKS: WHERE’S THE WORD ‘BREAKWATER’?
By Bill Pearl
Despite years of debate over the Long Beach Breakwater, which culminated in a vote by the Long Beach City Council to fund a Breakwater reconnaissance study, the term “Breakwater” doesn’t appear in the text of an agreement between the City of Long Beach and the Army Corps of Engineers to share the costs of a Feasibility Study.
The word “Breakwater” wasn’t mentioned by either Mayor Bob Foster or a Corps of Engineers representative in podium statements at a press event Tuesday, where they signed the cost-sharing agreement. (To see LBReport.com video of this event, click here.)
And a City of Long Beach press release describing the signing ceremony explicitly states that the now-commencing Corps of Engineers Feasibility Study was “formerly” the Breakwater Study.
The project (which will be half funded by LB City Hall at roughly $4 million if/when Congress funds the other $4 million half) is now called the “East San Pedro Bay Ecosystem Restoration” Feasibility Study.
That’s an inversion and removal of part of the June 2010 Corps of Engineers Reconnaissance Study titled, “Long Beach Breakwater” that was subtitled “(East San Pedro Bay Ecosystem Restoration) Reconnaissance Study.”
The Reconnaissance study said a project to improve water quality could potentially modify two of the most prominent and contributing features within the Study Area, the Long Beach Breakwater and the Los Angeles River and listed multiple ways to possibly do both that it said merited examination in a feasibility study.
Long Beach City Hall’s website acknowledges the changed Feasibility Study title but doesn’t say who made or approved the change … and downplays it:
“Through the Army Corps’ Reconnaissance Study [completed and released in June 2010], the scope of Long Beach’s breakwater study was expanded to include the Los Angeles River with the major focus on ecosystem restoration. Any Army Corps project must be aligned with federally directed missions and it was determined that Ecosystem Restoration best fit the needs of Long Beach and our project area…
The Long Beach Breakwater Study has officially become the East San Pedro Bay Ecosystem Restoration Study. Although the name of the study has changed from its original state, many of the original project objectives remain the same. Increased wave activity along the Long Beach coastline, in addition to better recreational water quality continue to be integral to the East San Pedro Bay Ecosystem Restoration Study. As the study name implies, ecosystem restoration has also become a prominent objective of this study. These three objectives will guide the East San Pedro Bay Ecosystem Restoration Feasibility Study over the next several years.”
A City Hall release describing the Nov. 30 signing ceremony for the LB-COE cost-sharing agreement on the Feasibility Study mentions “Breakwater” only once … in saying the now-commencing Feasibility Study was “formerly” the Long Beach Breakwater Project.
