Contaminated sludge looms as sticky issue in port expansion.

It's not too early to start thinking about sludge.

Or, more to the point, the inexpensive ways of getting rid of contaminated sludge that builds up in the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, according to Gary Horvitz, principal engineer with Hart-Crowser Inc. of Seattle.

Horvitz said the sludge problem at Southern California's ports isn't yet serious but "as you get more of this material dredged up as part of port expansion and port deepening, it's going to be more and more of an issue."

He refers to everything from diesel oil to chemical spills to the stuff that runs down the Los Angeles River and the Dominguez Channel into the harbor. It's the same kind of problem that threatens New York Harbor, where 35 million tons of contaminated sludge has to be dredged up and hauled away in the next four years to keep the port there from choking to death.

Sure, Horvitz said, we could truck all our goo to existing or new landfills too - but why spend that kind of money ($60 to $80 a cubic yard or more) when we can instead create port areas with the dredged-up gunk and build offices or other port facilities on them?

"You find an old embayment or an old slip that is not being used any more," he explained, "and basically build an enclosure berm across the mouth and then dredge the contaminated material into the pool that's been created, and then cap the material, and you've isolated it from the environment and basically sealed it off.

"You've capped it with clean material, and it's not going to give off harmful vapors. The key is to keep the contaminated material below the water table."

Horvitz noted that some contaminated material has already been used as part of the Pier 400 project in the southwest corner of San Pedro Bay. It was covered, he stressed, with "a very large segment of clean material," which was used as a fill to create a "vital intertidal habitat" - a place for little critters and vegetation to flourish.

"There are a lot of port facilities across the nation that are becoming rather constipated with contaminated material," he said. "But there are many different ways of managing it that are a lot cheaper than upland disposal."

Besides the in-port idea, another technology is to "find an area in deeper water, take all this contaminated material and mound it in that area, and then cap it so that the whole thing is below water and below navigational depth." The downside there: Monitoring of escaping contaminants is difficult.

Horvitz and a Hart-Crowser colleague, Philip Spadaro, will talk about this "Containment of Contaminated Dredge Spoil" at a luncheon meeting of the Harbor Association of Industry & Commerce at 11:30 a.m. on Sept. 12 at the Meridian 1050 Restaurant in Ports O'Call Village, San Pedro. For reservations, call 310-417-3929.