[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS - 12/12/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

December 12, 2007

 

3. Watersheds

 

SALTON SEA:

Latest Salton Sea plan introduced - Imperial Valley Press

 

Bombay Beach residents oppose new restoration plan - Imperial Valley Press

 

MUDSLIDE ISSUES:

Mudslide wipes trout off Orange County map; In Harding Canyon, debris flow after Santiago fire apparently buried remnant group of fish - Orange County Register

 

WETLANDS RESTORATION:

50-year plan for turning South Bay salt ponds to tidal wetlands - San Francisco Chronicle

 

 

SALTON SEA:

Latest Salton Sea plan introduced

Imperial Valley Press – 12/12/07

By Jonathan Dale, staff writer

 

BOMBAY BEACH — Leo Borunda does not like the direction of the Salton Sea Ecosystem Restoration Program.

“The Salton Sea is a beautiful thing,” the 15-year resident of Bombay Beach said. “It doesn’t need restoration; it needs preservation.”

Members of the state Department of Water Resources’ Colorado River and Salton Sea Office were met with reactions like Borunda’s and some his fellow sea dwellers when updating residents of the Imperial and Coachella valleys this week about the restoration plan. DWR representatives were in Bombay Beach on Tuesday afternoon and in Brawley on Tuesday evening.

Dale Hoffman-Floerke, the chief of the Colorado River and Salton Sea Office, laid out the restoration program’s plan to residents as it was presented to the Legislature in March.

The $8.9 billion plan would call for the divvying up of the sea through a system of barriers, berms and pumps as a means of protecting local birds and fish while still giving people a place for recreation and farmers a spot for irrigation runoff.

“We’ve been working pretty hard over the last three and a half years putting together this information as we look to restore the Salton Sea,” Hoffman-Floerke said. “One of the reasons the state wants to restore the sea is because of the ecological value.

“We know the influx of water from the New River is going to reduce dramatically and have an impact on the sea,” she said. “We have to incorporate how much water is going to be coming in to the sea.”

Hoffman-Floerke said the restoration program’s programmatic environmental impact report would create a 45,000-acre marine sea around the north, east and west banks of the Salton Sea from the San Felipe Creek all the way around to Bombay Beach.

That plan suggests the marine sea, which will be cordoned from the rest of the water by rock barriers, will have an oceanic salinity between 30,000 and 40,000 milligrams per liter and would be formed by 2022.

The rest of the sea would either be a salt-heavy brine sink, 106,000 acres of exposed playa or 62,000 acres of saline habitat complex for the ecosystem.

This plan is still reliant on Senate Bill 187, which would appropriate bond funds for the restoration for the first five years and would appoint a governing structure for the project. The bill failed earlier this fall.

Borunda said the Salton Sea would be negatively affected by such a plan, and said he enjoyed the 150 acres he owns in the area and the five blocks of beach along the sea.

“We don’t need a restoration plan,” Borunda said. “I don’t want to see (the Salton Sea) get chopped up.”
http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2007/12/12/local_news/news02.txt

 

 

Bombay Beach residents oppose new restoration plan

Imperial Valley Press – 12/12/07

By Jonathan Dale, staff writer

 

BOMBAY BEACH — Earl L. Griffis said he already feels pigeonholed when it comes to using the Salton Sea, and that he doesn’t want things to get worse.

Griffis was one of several residents of Bombay Beach who spoke Tuesday in opposition of the Salton Sea restoration plan out of concern that it would ruin what they have here.

“Nobody has seemed to give Bombay Beach any consideration in this process,” the resident of some 20 years said. “When that sea recedes, it’ll be out there a quarter mile, and that land is owned by the IID.”

Griffis said that right now residents of Bombay Beach, and indeed the public in general, can only use the sea along a 30-foot wide patch that extends from the town’s E Street, and that the restoration would take even that away from residents.

“That’s the only legal access we have to the sea at the present time,” Griffis said. “The IID has the marina chained off, and the state has the state park closed.”

Sonia Herbert, who said she has lived “on and off” in Bombay Beach for 33 years, was one of a couple of those present that pointed out a pair of hurricanes that hit the Salton Sea in the 1970s and actually flooded the surrounding areas as being proof that the sea does not need restoration.

“Nature can take care of itself,” Herbert said.

Herbert was also displeased with the idea held by many in the room that the sea’s restoration did not take into account those who live on its banks.

“These people that come down here and make these proposals don’t live down here,” she said. “They don’t see the beauty here.

“This (proposal) is a death knell for this whole area,” Herbert said. “It will destroy the whole sea.” #
http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2007/12/12/local_news/news03.txt

 

 

MUDSLIDE ISSUES:

Mudslide wipes trout off Orange County map; In Harding Canyon, debris flow after Santiago fire apparently buried remnant group of fish

Orange County Register – 12/12/07

By Pat Brennan, staff writer

 

It was a race against time for the rainbow trout in Orange County's Harding Canyon, but biologists say they lost the race: a mudslide buried the last members of an isolated population before they could be collected and moved.

 

The trout possessed the capacity to turn into protected southern steelhead – if they could have reached the ocean. They were one of several such remnant populations in Southern California.

 

In one rolling slump, the mudslide apparently wiped out one of Orange County's last clusters of native rainbow trout – and possibly, the very last.

 

"What we feared, happened," said Adam Backlin, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "The hillsides just slumped into the canyon, and buried the entire creek."

 

The story is one of wildfire, denuded slopes and rain, and how many of Southern California's dwindling species teeter on the edge of the abyss. The ranges of fish and amphibians that once thrived in many mountain canyons have shrunken into isolated pockets; once that happens, all it takes is one push from fire, storms or mudslides to send them to oblivion.

 

Backlin said he became concerned about the Harding Canyon trout, which dwelled in a series of rocky pools along a quarter-mile stretch of the creek, after the Santiago fire, which burned more than 28,000 acres and was part of a general October conflagration in Southern California.

 

He knew that one good rain would likely fill the trouts' refuges with mud. Backlin was busy trying to arrange with the state Department of Fish and Game for temporary removal of the fish when the rain did, in fact, hit.

 

The rocky pools, and the trout with them, disappeared beneath an estimated three to six feet of mud – largely as predicted by USGS scientists in a series of maps estimating debris flows in burned canyons.

 

"It was pretty close, based on some of the photos we took of the amounts of debris," Backlin said.

 

It's a story the scientists at USGS have told before. In 2003, they raised the alarm about a post-wildfire mudslide that appeared to wipe out the last mountain yellow-legged frogs in the San Bernardino Mountains.

 

Later, a few surviving frogs were found, and now scientists are working to re-establish them.

 

The Harding Canyon trout, however, are unlikely to make such a lucky comeback. Backlin and another scientist searched below the mudslide, hoping to find a few trout that had washed downstream, but they said their search came up empty.

 

Southern steelhead are a protected species when they head for the open ocean and take on the streamlined shape that gives them their name. The ability to change from a freshwater to an oceangoing form, known as anadromy, allows the fish to exploit both habitats, and to return to protected upland pools for breeding.

 

But when they are in their rainbow trout phase, they are not protected. The Harding Canyon trout, the likely descendants of fish that swam upstream decades ago, were blocked forever from the ocean by the Modjeska reservoir and other barriers.

 

They are one of several populations of rainbow trout in a similar predicament in Southern California canyons: bearing a full complement of genes that would allow them to transform into steelhead, but unable to reach the sea.

 

Backlin also searched for other species of concern during his trip to the canyons. He was unable to find the southwestern pond turtle, another species that has dwindled because of habitat loss.

 

But he said he was less worried about the turtles.

 

"Turtles seem to do better than fish do," he said. "They go just a little way up the hillside, and bury themselves underground for the winter."

 

He also did not see the speckled dace, another rare fish, though the species is encountered less and less in Southern California mountain ranges and was likely a longshot for Orange County canyons anyway.

 

Backlin said he hopes the example of the Harding Canyon trout will help gain favor for one of his wildlife management ideas:

 

encouraging state and federal wildlife agencies to develop emergency plans for isolated groups of animals, so they can be sheltered or moved during times of crisis.

 

"It seems like a lot of these agencies aren't prepared to deal with issues on short timelines," he said. "I think a lot of these agencies should have a contingency plan – especially for these rare species, in cases where you do have a unique animal." #

http://www.ocregister.com/news/trout-one-backlin-1940164-southern-fish

 

 

WETLANDS RESTORATION:

50-year plan for turning South Bay salt ponds to tidal wetlands

San Francisco Chronicle – 12/12/07

By Jane Kay, staff writer

 

State and federal wildlife officials will unveil an ambitious wetlands restoration plan Wednesday that promises strong levees around South Bay homes and businesses, new bayside trails for hikers and more places for bird watchers to spot shorebirds and ducks.

 

The plan is the first phase of a $1 billion, 50-year effort to restore thousands of acres of former Cargill Inc. salt ponds purchased by the government four years ago.

 

Various wildlife agencies will work together to expand the bay's wildlife habitat and build trails and nature centers as part of the long-term restoration. They also will construct solid levees to prevent flooding from periodic storms and rising seas associated with global warming.

 

The first round of projects, which will be built between 2008 and 2010, will cost $32 million, officials said. Much of the money likely will come from bonds already approved by state voters.

 

"We're going to be adding public access where it never existed under Cargill," said Clyde Morris, the manager of the San Francisco National Wildlife Refuge.

 

"People can leave the urban environment and actually see with their own eyes what they would otherwise only see on the Discovery Channel," he said.

 

After years of initial work by scientists, local officials and the public, the plan released Wednesday is the final environmental review prepared by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and California Department of Fish and Game.

 

Early efforts over the past few years to open the ponds near Alviso and Hayward to the less salty bay water already have attracted a bonanza of birds. Fish follow the fresher water, and birds follow the fish.

 

"Within a week of restoring some of the ponds, we had high use by fish-eating birds" such as pelicans, Morris said. The number of visiting waterfowl has more than doubled, and the number of shorebirds has grown even more, he said.

 

Today's plan favors converting 90 percent of the former ponds to tidal marsh.

 

Saltwater marsh and mudflats most resemble what the edges of San Francisco Bay were like before the last century of development. About 80 percent of the wetlands were diked or filled, ruining the ecosystems that acted as nurseries for fish and crabs, habitat and feeding grounds for birds and natural filters for pollutants.

 

Because the salt ponds also have attracted some bird species, scientists are recommending that half of the ponds at first be turned over to marsh. Then, with continued monitoring, managers will convert the rest of the ponds - unless scientific scrutiny shows the restoration has some unintended negative effect.

 

The planners call it "adaptive management" because they hope to learn from the actions they take.

 

Some of the restoration projects planned for the former salt ponds:

 

-- A 2 1/2-mile segment of the Bay Trail will open between Mountain View's Stevens Creek and Sunnyvale for hiking, biking and watching wildlife. Ducks flock there in the winter, and herons and egrets feed year-round. The least terns that breed on the former Alameda Air Station, which environmentalists want to secure for the refuge, bring young there in August to feed and learn how to fish before the winter migration to Mexico.

 

-- Near Santa Clara and Alviso, managers will open about 900 acres of ponds to the tides, bringing the new tidal marsh there to about 1,400 acres. Brown and white pelicans, ruddy ducks and double-crested cormorants feed there. People walking near about 250 acres of shallow ponds with 50 nesting islands will see American avocets, black-necked stilts and Forster's terns.

 

Thousands of western and least sandpipers, grebes, marbled godwits and dunlins come in the winter.

 

-- Near Hayward, the agencies will build an interpretive site with raised walkways and viewing platforms overlooking the remnants of old salt works. Birds and ducks will congregate at some 230 acres of ponds and 630 acres of tidal habitat.

 

In 2003, the state and federal government joined with private foundations to pay $100 million for 16,500 acres of the ponds owned by Cargill Inc., a giant agribusiness. Of the acreage, 15,100 acres are in the South Bay and are part of this restoration project. The other 1,400 aces are in the North Bay on wildlife refuge land.

 

Very little of the restoration money is in hand. The funds will be cobbled together from future federal appropriations and grant proposals as well as past voter-approved propositions, money collected as part of development deals and fines levied on bay poachers.

 

"The money hasn't been officially committed, but we fully believe that the state will provide substantial funding for the restoration from voter-approved bonds," said Steve Ritchie, executive project manager at the state Coastal Conservancy, an agency helping to coordinate the regional plan.

 

The cost of levee building on the shoreline of San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda counties is estimated to represent more than half of the $1 billion, Ritchie said.

 

Scientists say global warming could cause bay waters to rise more than 2 feet during this century. Levees will be built close to the land, and tidal marsh will stretch out beyond to the bay waters. The levees must be built so that they can be raised as the need arises, planners say.

 

Without levees, Silicon Valley - including Google, Yahoo, the Moffett Business Park and the community of Alviso - would be among sites under water, according to projections. Flood surges now could inundate property, Ritchie said.

 

Levees are needed around Menlo Park and East Palo Alto on the bay's west side and Hayward on the bay's east side, according to officials.

 

At the southern tip of the bay, groundwater pumping for agricultural over past decades has caused land to sink, making the bay's shoreline vulnerable to flooding in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Alviso, San Jose and Milpitas.

 

The agencies involved hope to receive $4 million in the Interior Department budget, an appropriation proposed by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-San Francisco. The Santa Clara Valley Water and the Alameda Flood Control districts have applied for state bond money, as has the state Coastal Conservancy.

 

Besides raising the money, project planners must deal with mercury pollution from old mines, preventing the spread of invasive East Coast cordgrass and allowing sediment to fill in sunken areas of the South Bay to keep ahead of the rise in sea level. #

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/12/MN95TS72V.DTL

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