Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
July 9, 2009
3. Watersheds –
State sanctions marina concessionaire
Oroville Mercury-Register
Yosemite seeks ideas about crowd control
Fresno Bee
Plan to restore rare trout sparks protests
USA Today
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State sanctions marina concessionaire
Oroville Mercury-Register-7/8/09
By Mary Weston
Boat owners at Bidwell Marina may be up the creek, but not without a battle.
About 900 boat owners with boats moored at the Lake Oroville marina were issued eviction notices by FunTime FullTime last week, ordering them to move their boats by Aug. 1.
Boat owners say it's impossible to move 900 boats in 30 days, especially the large houseboats, so the Lake Oroville Boat Owners Association is fighting back with legal action.
Now, State Parks is pressuring Frank Moothart, the concessionaire, to rescind the evictions, said Steve Feazel, superintendent of State Parks in Oroville.
"The concession division of State Parks has sent a letter to him that he's in breach of contract and he needs to rescind the eviction notices," Feazel said.
State Parks operates the lake, which is a reservoir for the California Department of Water Resources. Moothart leases the marina site from State Parks. His 30-year lease ends Dec. 1.
Boat owners like Jerry Johnson, president of the boat owners association, have mooring leases to keep their boats in the Bidwell Marina, located in Bidwell Canyon.
The disagreement began after State Parks denied Moothart's request for an automatic 10-year lease extension.
One reason State Parks gave, in a letter for not granting the extension, was the number of complaints from boat owners.
Johnson said boat owners had complained to State Parks for several years that Moothart had not maintained the marina.
He said the mooring system is old and faulty, and many boats had broken loose and sustained major damage over the years.
The list of complaints is long, including rental agreements, high fees for paying monthly or quarterly, unfair selection of rental applicants, maintenance issues, gas leaks into the lake and so forth.
"The list goes on and on," Johnson said.
State Parks has sent out a request for proposals for a marina operator.
The proposals have to be returned by Aug. 12, and State Parks will select one applicant to take over by Dec. 1.
Whoever leases the marina will be required to install $3.5 million in improvements in the first years of the lease.
Feazel said incentives have been inserted in the new lease agreement to encourage a smooth transition for the boat owners and whoever will operate the marina.
The agreement states that if the new contractor negotiates with the existing contractor to buy the marina facilities, the $3.5 million in improvements can be postponed in the first four years.
Additionally, State Parks has offered to house some of the boats in parking areas, if they have to be pulled out because of low water or the eviction.
Johnson isn't optimistic about the transition period or the parking lot offer.
He said if moving storage and security for the boats were coordinated by the marina like it is in Lime Saddle, that could work. However, Moothart has refused those obligations in the past, he said, and the boats would be vandalized in the parking lot, even if boat owners could afford the cost or find a boat mover to pull them out of the marina.
There are only three boat haulers that could move the boats from the marina. Johnson's boat like some others is 108 feet long. He said there aren't any trailers in the state large enough to pull those boats.
Johnson also doesn't expect Moothart to make it easy for another contractor to take over.
"It's just not going to be a very smooth transition, I'm afraid," Johnson said.
Therefore, the boat owners have hired an attorney to file a legal action to stop evictions.
Meanwhile, Moothart is circulating fliers and requesting people to sign a petition online to "Save the Bidwell Marina" by stopping the state from issuing the new contract for operation.
However, Moothart wasn't available Wednesday afternoon to comment.
Other agencies agree with the boat owners.
The Oroville City Council told staff to send a letter to DWR and other agencies protesting the evictions.
Mayor Steve Jernigan said it just isn't fair for the marina operator to have the boats removed from the lake. The eviction notice and national news coverage is negatively impacting Oroville, and it will also discourage boats from mooring at the lake, he said.
Art Hatley City Councilman said the boat owners shop at local businesses and are an asset to the area.
"That's a little city in itself in the summer," he said.
Johnson, who lives in Auburn, said he is one of more than 20 boat owners from California and other states who have houseboats more than 75 feet long, that can't be moored in other lakes in the state.
"We would have to move our boats to another state," he said.#
http://www.orovillemr.com/news/ci_12790440
Yosemite seeks ideas about crowd control
Fresno Bee-7/8/09
By Mark Grossi
Nine years after creating a plan to limit crowds in Yosemite Valley, National Park Service officials are starting over again.
Fresno will be the first stop in a tour of cities from Sacramento to Pasadena where officials will seek public comment about protecting wildlife and banks of the Merced River from crowds. The Fresno meeting will be from 4 to 8 p.m. Monday at outdoor-sports retailer REI, 7810 N. Blackstone Ave.
A federal judge ordered the new plan two years ago, agreeing with environmentalists that the National Park Service needs to put a firm limit on how many people can visit the Merced and adjoining areas.
Environmental activists say the limit is needed because millions of people each year pass through Yosemite Valley, where the Merced is the main waterway. The plan also will help shape future road and construction projects in the valley.
People from all over the globe have followed this legal fight, and more than 10,000 people commented on the first plan.
The park service also has been consulting with the two environmental watchdog groups that filed the marathon lawsuit -- Friends of Yosemite Valley and Mariposans for Environmentally Responsible Government.
Nothing has been announced yet about possible changes in the park service's planning approach.
"We're hoping for a different and better result this time," said Greg Adair of Friends of Yosemite Valley.
The new plan will have to deal with many arguments between environmentalists and the park service over such issues as campground replacement, rebuilding Yosemite Lodge and rerouting traffic.
But the plan's success will hinge on establishing how many people can visit the river without trampling vegetation, eroding the banks and harming creatures in the area.
In the previous plan, the park service avoided a firm capacity limit, proposing monitoring so limits could be adjusted as needed depending on the river's condition and the amount of visitation. The method is used in other recreation spots, officials said.
The proposal was overturned in court. Though many projects in Yosemite Valley have been completed in the past nine years, the $35 million reconstruction of the lodge and long-awaited rerouting of the access roads were stopped.
The public meetings this summer are considered a continuation of meetings that began in 2007 but were put on hold during an unsuccessful park service appeal. People who made comments two years ago do not need to resubmit their comments, officials said.
Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said the new river plan will be more specific than the previous one, which focused on broad concepts. That's why officials need to hear ideas from the public about such issues as where campgrounds, boardwalks and trails should go.
"We will be more definitive now," Gediman said.
After comments are collected, the park service will produce an environmental document assessing the possible effects and setting some kind of crowd limits. The document then will be presented to the public.
Officials expect to complete the plan by September 2012 -- a dozen years after the first plan was finished.#
http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/1523979.html
Plan to restore rare trout sparks protests
USA Today-7/8/09
By Jeff DeLong
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game are moving forward with a plan to restore one of the country's rarest trout to its native habitat by poisoning a remote Sierra stream, despite ongoing criticism.
An environmental impact report — ordered by a federal judge in 2005 — is in the comment period and expected to be finalized by October. The project, at Silver King Creek, a wilderness area south of Lake Tahoe, is scheduled for next summer.
Since 2002, protests and legal action have delayed the project to restore the rare Paiute cutthroat trout.
"They want to put an agent in the water that kills everything," says Patty Clary of Californians for Alternatives to Toxics, an opponent of the project. "That's not OK. This is a very precious area." Another lawsuit could be filed if the final impact report fails to adequately address concerns over the proposed fish poisoning, Clary says.
"It's still a very exciting project, and it's very viable," counters Bob Williams, field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Reno.
The Paiute cutthroat trout, listed as endangered in 1967 and upgraded to threatened status in 1975, has become hybridized with other trout in the stream, he says.
The plan calls for the poison rotenone to be used along 11 miles of Silver King Creek, its tributaries and Tamarack Lake Creek. Williams says hybridized trout could then be removed and the stream restocked with pure Paiute cutthroats from hatcheries.
Williams says rotenone would have no long-lasting impact on aquatic life and that macro invertebrates would recolonize the treated area within a few years.
California biologists have twice before used rotenone to rid Lake Davis, a Northern California trout fishing lake, of invading northern pike that they feared would escape into the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta.
The first attempt in 1997 failed, and pike returned two years later.
The California Department of Fish and Game poisoned the lake in September 2007, and no pike have been found since, spokeswoman Carol Singleton says.
Stafford Lehr, senior environmental scientist and project manager for California Fish and Game, says report comments are being responded to carefully.
"Our intent is to address those controversies up front," he says. "It's going to be a matter of opinion as to whether we have done that."
The "vast majority" of comments are favorable, Lehr says. Critics remain dissatisfied.
A June 12 comment written to California water officials by attorney Julia Olson for Californians for Alternatives to Toxics and Wilderness Watch describes the report as "unreliable."#
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2009-07-08-raretrout_N.htm
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