Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
August 19, 2009
5. Agencies, Programs, People –
Dan Walters: Can Capitol's dysfunction ever be fixed?
Sacramento Bee Column
Excavators remove a relic of Camp Meeker's past
Santa Rosa Press Democrat
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Dan Walters: Can Capitol's dysfunction ever be fixed?
Sacramento Bee Column– 8/19/09
As two legislative committees opened hearings on water legislation Tuesday, state Sen. Joe Simitian, one bill's author, reminded colleagues that they are held in low esteem by voters, but could prove the state is still governable by cracking the decades-long water stalemate.
A few minutes later, as if on cue, two other committees began exploring why California's politicians have such difficulty acting on the multiple crises – water, a deficit-ridden budget, transportation and education, among others – that afflict the state.
After many years of indifference, Californians have, indeed, become intolerant about the Capitol's chronic dysfunction, manifesting itself in a historic low approval rating – below 10 percent in some polls – for the Legislature.
California's social, economic and geographic complexity, which spawns countless and often disparate interest groups, collides with a governance structure that makes it very difficult to set policy but very easy to block action. And the result most often is gridlock, with water being a perfect example.
Two separate, somewhat competitive movements have been launched to overhaul governance in California, and representatives of both testified Tuesday, along with other political stakeholders.
California Forward, a bipartisan group backed by major foundations, is floating a series of constitutional amendments to overhaul state budgeting, clarify relations between the state and local governments, and create more accountability. It wants the Legislature to place them on the 2010 ballot.
"I believe there's a sense of urgency about change," Robert Hertzberg, a former speaker of the Assembly and co-chairman of California Forward, says. "People are mad as hell."
Hertzberg says his group is prepared to place the measures before voters via initiatives if the Legislature balks – which it probably will. The package includes measures that alienate either liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans, probably precluding the two-thirds vote that legislative action would require.
The Bay Area Council, a group of corporate executives, is moving, meanwhile, toward asking voters next year to call a constitutional convention that would write constitutional changes for submission to voters.
Jim Wunderman, who heads the council, listed the state's many unresolved issues for legislators Tuesday and said, "Something clearly needs to be done about it."
There were nods of agreement among lawmakers about the state's crisis of governance but also great uncertainty about how to proceed. Fred Silva, a veteran of past battles over constitutional reform who now advises California Forward, told lawmakers that "You have to develop a constituency for change or it isn't going to happen."
Will it happen? The same inertial forces that render the legislative process so impotent could also thwart meaningful reform. But the alternative is plummeting further into the civic abyss. #
http://www.sacbee.com/walters/story/2120739.html
Excavators remove a relic of Camp Meeker's past
Santa Rosa Press Democrat – 8/19/09
By Robert Digitale
The yellow excavator was rapping like a woodpecker against the old dam, pounding through concrete and signaling the end of an era for the village that Melvin Cyrus “Boss” Meeker laid out in the redwoods a century ago.
Camp Meeker, a village in western Sonoma County, is removing the last trace of a once-popular swimming hole that for the past decade has remained unused in order to minimize harm to endangered salmon and steelhead.
The dam, which could create a sizeable swimming hole with water over 10 feet deep, will vanish. An adjacent section of Dutch Bill Creek, which flows north into the Russian River near Monte Rio, will be restored. And a new steel footbridge over the creek will replace the narrow walkway that sat atop the dam.
“It’s sad to see it go, but I know it’s the right thing,” said Louise Patterson, a Camp Meeker resident for more than four decades.
Patterson, standing beside the village post office, expressed gratitude for the many summer days that her family spent at the swimming hole, the place her children first learned to swim. But she said in recent times it has become clear that “dams are not good for fish.”
The Gold Ridge Resource Conservation District of Occidental and the Camp Meeker Recreation and Park District are partners in a $1 million project to remove the dam and restore the creek. To improve the passage of fish, the project also will add a series of low concrete baffles in a large rectangular culvert under Market Street, a main entryway to the hillside community.
The work will be financed by grants from seven agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries service, state Fish and Game, state Coastal Conservancy and the county of Sonoma.
The aim is to provide a pleasant and natural place where people can get close to the creek.
“It would let people begin to see what this area looked like before we were there,” said Gary Helfrich, a member of the recreation and park district board.
The dam was built in the 1950s, said Helfrich. It replaced downstream swimming holes that likely were used in the days when a narrow-gauge railroad still brought Bay Area residents to summer homes there on such San Francisco-sounding streets as Van Ness, Mission and Montgomery.
With the new dam, Camp Meeker’s volunteer firefighters each spring would insert thick wooden flashboards to block its center opening, thereby backing up the creek water.
But in 1996 the federal government listed the region’s coho salmon as a threatened species, followed the next year by steelhead.
Eventually state fish and game officials required the owners of the region’s summer dams to conduct environmental impact reports to investigate the dam’s impact on fish. For Camp Meeker, Helfrich said, the cost of the report likely would have exceeded the park district’s annual budget.
“It began to be really clear for us that the world had changed,” he said. Never again were the flashboards set into the dam.
But in an era when creeks are no longer dammed, officials began to hear about grants that might be available for stream restoration and for a new footbridge. Eventually the park district teamed up with the resource conservation district, which was putting together a project on the nearby Market Street culvert.
Steven Chatham, president of Prunuske Chatham of Sebastopol, a contractor that specializes in restoration projects, estimated that for the project his workers will haul out 20 truckloads of demolished concrete — about 200 tons.
The work also will require removing about 1,500 tons of soil built up behind the dam, plus bringing in about 1,600 tons of rock. That rock will provide step-up pools below the culvert to help fish more easily swim upstream, as well as providing an area behind the dam for people to walk up and sit next to the creek.
The design and the work will be tested, Chatham said.
“Water is very unforgiving,” he said. “If you don’t get it right . . . it will tear apart what you’ve done.”
Lisa Hulette, executive director of the resource conservation district, said the project will remove the last known fish barriers along the creek. When completed, she hopes “people feel proud to show it off.” #
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090817/ARTICLES/908179925
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