A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
April 16, 2008
3. Watersheds -
Moment of truth for
San Francisco Chronicle
Half
San Francisco Chronicle
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Moment of truth for
San Francisco Chronicle – 4/16/08
Carolyn Jones, Staff Writer
The tale of the
Council members are expected to discuss seven options for controlling the beavers, who took up residence in Alhambra Creek 18 months ago and whose dams have wreaked havoc on the city's pricey new landscaping and elaborate flood-control measures.
The options include widening the creek around the dams, installing a bypass pipe and raising the floodwalls. The costs range from $2,000 to more than $100,000.
"We looked at plans that enable us to coexist with the beavers in a way that does not bring increased flood risk to the downtown," said Councilwoman Lara Delaney, who sat on the Beavers in Alhambra Creek subcommittee.
"We're the city of
Last fall, the beavers' future was not so rosy. Fearing that the animals' obsessive handiwork would cause the creek to flood in the rainy season, the city considered killing the beavers and removing their intricate mud-and-stick dams.
But public outcry was so great that the city agreed to look at other options. The committee submitted its 118-page report last week, and the council will listen to public comment before making a decision, probably at its next meeting.
"There's a lot of excitement about the beavers," said public works director Dave Scola. "We've had busloads of people come and watch them. School field trips. Kids. Anyone can see them - they're right there by the bridge."
The beavers' biggest dam is between Escobar and Marina Vista bridges, about 30 feet wide and at one time 6 feet high. A few weeks ago, the city hired a beaver expert from
It worked, but then the beavers started building another dam about 100 yards downstream.
Still, beaver control is not rocket science, Lisle said.
"If we can put a man on the moon, we can outsmart beavers. They're not very good at deductive reasoning," he said. "They're very single-minded."
Beavers build dams so they have a pool to dive into to escape from predators, Lisle said. They also use the pools to easily transport tree branches, which double as lunch and building material.
The nocturnal animals spend most nights compulsively patching and weaving their dams. When one is finished, they'll start another. After a rainstorm, they'll forgo sleep to repair the damage, diving for mud and collecting sticks and branches.
In
The saga started in late 2006, when a male and female beaver arrived in Alhambra Creek, probably from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, Scola said. Within a few months they had three babies, although one died from parasites.
Beavers have also moved into creeks in
"
Beavers, mild-mannered vegetarians who aren't shy of people, were once common throughout the Bay Area but were hunted to near extinction in the early 20th century. The population is slowly recovering, as beavers find they can flourish in urban environments, Lisle said.
Sherri Tippie, a beaver trapper from
"People can be so anal about what they think our creeks should look like," she said. "They want creeks to be static. But beavers belong in creeks as much as water does."
To get involved
The Martinez City Council meets at 7 tonight at the Contra Costa County Supervisors' chambers,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/16/BAFG1066A2.DTL
Half
San Francisco Chronicle – 4/16/08
John Cote, Staff Writer
Environmental groups and the state Coastal Commission are lining up against proposed legislation that would exempt a development on Half Moon Bay wetlands from environmental laws as part of a settlement the city reached to avoid possible bankruptcy.
The proposed state legislation, which would resolve an eight-year legal dispute between the coastal town and Palo Alto developer Charles "Chop" Keenan, would set a dangerous precedent for development across California, environmentalists warned.
The bill to allow 129 units of housing to be built on the man-made wetlands along Highway 1 is "a sweeping proposal that we have strong objections to," said Paul Mason, deputy director of Sierra Club
"It's a very, very dangerous precedent to be setting, where we're going to have a very untenable situation locally, largely of their own making, and then try to avoid compliance with core environmental laws," Mason said.
The Coastal Commission voted unanimously Thursday to oppose the legislation, which Commissioner Sara Wan called "a very bad settlement agreement."
Half Moon Bay's attorneys and Assemblyman Gene Mullin, D-South San Francisco, author of AB1991, contend the bill is crafted to apply only to the "perfect storm" the city found itself in after a federal judge ruled last year that a botched city drainage project had inadvertently turned a 24-acre property into protected wetlands.
"If it set a precedent, I wouldn't carry the bill," said Mullin, who Mason acknowledged is typically friendly to environmental causes. "It is clearly a one-time, unique set of circumstances."
The property at the center of the legal dispute was tentatively approved in 1990 as the site of an 83-unit subdivision. It has been planned for residential development since at least 1976.
In the 1980s, the city built a storm runoff system on the land in advance of planned development and dug out large sections of dirt that was moved to an adjacent project. Development was suspended while a
By the time the plant was finished, a slow-growth majority controlled the City Council and decided in 2000 that new protected wetlands had appeared on the property.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled Nov. 28 that Half Moon Bay had irreparably harmed Keenan's acreage and ordered the city to pay $36.8 million. With Keenan's attorney's fees, the amount rose to $41.1 million - four times the city's annual budget.
"This really is a perfect storm of unusual facts that came together here," said John King, an attorney the city hired after the ruling.
Faced with possible bankruptcy, the city appealed
If development rights are not granted by 2011, the city has to pay Keenan $18 million.
In an April 11 letter to Assemblyman Ted Lieu, D-Torrance (Los Angeles County), environmental groups accused Half Moon Bay and Keenan of "seeking to hold a gun to the head of California state legislators, the Coastal Commission and all California's environmental laws in order to pursue development of a project that is otherwise explicitly illegal."
The letter to Lieu, chairman of the Assembly Rules Committee, was signed by members of the Sierra Club, California League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council and Defenders of Wildlife.
Backers of the settlement said the city had little choice.
"In fact, we had a gun pointed at our head that was the result of a $41 million judgment by a federal judge. That's the real gun," said Lanny Davis, another attorney representing the city. "We had only two choices: take the risk on appeal and expose yourself to bankruptcy, or try to get a one-off bill passed."
Mullin's bill specifies that the environmental law exception applies only because the wetlands are man-made, the plot already had tentative city approval for development and Half Moon Bay faced a federal judgment that could have devastated services.
Future requests for similar environmental exemptions would require all three factors to be present, Mullin said.
Opponents of Mullin's bill say the city should have appealed what they considered to be an improper ruling.
"The precedent is the process," said Sarah Christie, the Coastal Commission's legislative director. "The precedent is that you can get a bad decision out of a federal court and go to the Legislature to ask them to implement it for you. That's the precedent."#
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/16/BA4I1060OS.DTL
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