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Inside the Agencies
CREEK CRMP COALESCES
Citizen monitoring has spawned agency action along the Peninsula's San Francisquito Creek, where a Coordinated Resource Management and Planning (CRMP) process is gathering steam. "This is a direct outgrowth of the stream inventories sponsored by the Estuary Project," says the Coyote Creek Riparian Station's Mike Rigney. Information gathered during creek surveys - part of an S.F. Estuary Project watershed demonstration project - helped convince agency representatives to develop a watershed management plan for the creek.
To date, close to 90 government agencies and community interests have been involved in this locally based consensus-building CRMP process coordinated by the nonprofit Peninsula Conservation Center Foundation. According to the Foundation's Debbie Mytels, planning for the 40-square-mile watershed involves more local agencies and raises more issues than CRMP processes usually tackle. "San Francisquito Creek divides two counties and several cities," she says. "It starts in the foothills, where range management is a concern, then flows through suburban and urban areas, where social issues like homelessness need to be addressed, then ends at the Bay, where we need to look at flood control. Of course, all along the way, we have pollution going into the creek."
CRMP participants have organized task forces around six critical issues and "StreamKeepers," trained by the Riparian Station, will soon be patrolling the watershed's gutters (see calendar). "This marks the first time that all these agencies have come together over one issue - to make sure the San Francisquito watershed and its resources are protected and enhanced. And it shows how demonstration projects evolve into coordinated programs for resource planning," says Rigney. Contact: Debbie Mytels (415)962- 9876
WETLAND OR WETLAND?
Will a pintail or a harvest mouse know the difference between a pristine wetland and a stormwater treatment marsh? Will the building industry fork over for the treatment marsh management and monitoring plans required under a new S.F. Regional Board policy? These were some of the questions discussed at a recent multi-interest roundtable meeting in preparation for a Board vote on the new policy August 17. The policy separates out wetlands constructed for urban runoff treatment from wetlands constructed to treat municipal wastewater. A policy for the latter has been in effect since 1977. "We realized there were too many differences between stormwater and wastewater regulation to deal with them in the same policy," says the Board's Kristina Hufford. As part of its long-term regional wetlands planning effort, the Board revised and adopted a new policy for wastewater wetlands this July and created the separate policy for marshes used to remove pollutants from urban runoff this August. The latter policy contains provisions to prevent hazards to wildlife, requires a management and monitoring plan, and recognizes marshes made solely for urban runoff treatment rather than for wetland mitigation, habitat or net environmental benefit. "It offers an avenue by which project sponsors can propose a treatment system without risking 404 regulation under the Clean Water Act," says Hufford. Contact: Kristina Hufford (510)286-4212
ONE-STOP PERMITTING
"The Office" - a one-stop spot to get all your dredging business done - is the centerpiece of a new proposal for simplifying the burdensome regulatory process ports, marinas and dockowners must go through to get their dredging projects approved.
"All the agencies agree that the Office is something they need," says the Bay Planning Coalition's Ellen Johnck, who helped draft the proposal and whose group represents industry. "There's no agency resistance, thanks to LTMS." LTMS is a four-year cooperative effort involving over 60 government agencies and diverse interests in drafting a regional long term management strategy (LTMS) for dredged material disposal.
According to Johnck, the Office would be the fulcrum of LTMS efforts to simplify today's multi-agency, multi-permit, multi- office system. The Office would have a single permit application, standardized sediment evaluation procedures, and new decisionmaking protocols that bring all the agencies together in an effort to come to a consensus position on each permit.
Johnck says the big remaining issues are how much responsibility the Office will have for LTMS implementation and how to resolve interagency disputes. "It all has no meaning if resource agencies choose to invoke the Endangered Species Act over a permit," she says. "If that happens, you can just throw LTMS into the Bay."
But Cal Fish & Game's Bob Tasto is optimistic about what he sees as improved opportunities for environmental protection via the Office. "As a resource agency, we'll have a more timely and direct impact on dredging applications every step of the way and be able to evaluate them before and during rather than after a considerable investment has been made," he says.
Agency and industry enthusiasm for the proposal isn't shared by LTMS' environmental members, who point out that it was developed without their participation. "The proposal deals only with issues of import to the dredging community and ignores a major concern of the fishing and environmental communities - the development of alternative disposal sites," says the Natural Heritage Institute's Cynthia Koehler. "Any new permit process must take into account the development of these alternatives. Leaving them out of the proposal means they are not part of the basic LTMS implementation mechanism."
The Office proposal is now making its way through the formal LTMS consensus-building and review process. Contact: Ellen Johnck (415)397-2293
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