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Bulletin Board
Prospect Island Restoration
What do dead-end sloughs and shoals have in common? Combined with a decent reach of shallow water, they're both favored habitat of the endangered Delta smelt and the focus of a 1,319 acre restoration of Prospect Island. The Army Corps will complete final plans for restoring the island this March, and shortly thereafter release them for public comment and environmental impact review.
The mechanics involve excavating a channel down the center of the island, constructing new interior islands, stabilizing some levees and breaching others to restore tidal action. The finished product will offer smelt and winter-run chinook salmon 600 acres of open water, 550 acres of tule emergent marsh, and 100 acres of riparian zone. What's special about this project, according to the Corps' Leslie Lew, is that it's "pretty simple and sustainable." Unlike managing seasonal wetlands for waterfowl, "no one has to go out and remove flashboards and disk cattails on an ongoing basis," she says. Construction is set to begin in summer 1998. Contact: Leslie Lew (916) 557-6929
Estuary Project Pow-Wow
All 28 of the U.S. EPA's estuary projects, including San Francisco's, will converge in the Bay Area late this February to discuss what they have in common. The projects have been developing comprehensive, consensus-based plans to address the problems facing the nation's most significant bays, sounds and harbors. "The outcome of our meeting will be a report to the nation featuring issues and solutions common across the country, documenting aggregate non-federal dollars leveraged and hours donated by volunteers, and reviewing our success in engaging local communities in stewardship," says Richard Volk, Chair of the Association of National Estuary Programs. Volk says it will be the first time a reporting effort has drawn on input from people participating in the actual programs. The San Francisco program's Marcia Brockbank adds that the pow-wow and report is also "an attempt to muster support in the face of severely shrinking federal budgets." Contact: Marcia Brockbank (510) 286-0780
Sonoma High Sells Toilets
The Leadership class at Sonoma Valley High School has found a way to turn old porcelain into gold- and helped local residents save more than 10 million gallons of water a year. The class completed its second toilet replacement drive in November, distributing more than 800 ultra low-flow toilets and collecting the old ones, which were recycled into porcelain dust for use as road base. The school received $15 for every toilet returned for a total of approximately $12,000. The Sonoma Valley Water Agency picked up the tab for the toilets, while Cooperative Technologies & Services International managed the program for the Agency. According to Mary Lou Teske of CTSI, which has managed dozens of similar programs at high schools in Southern California, the Sonoma students' efforts have been one of the most successful so far. Combined with a similar drive last April, the Sonoma High students have distributed nearly 2,000 toilets, earning a total of $26,000. One final effort is planned for the fall of 1997, after which program organizers expect the market for new toilets to be saturated. Contact: Mary Lou Teske (707) 585-3999
Duck Club Penalized
A "firm stance" on enforcement is what the S.F. Bay Commission's Kimberly Kim calls a February 6 settlement with the owners of the Tule Red property in Suisun Marsh. Without a Commission permit, the owners had burned and mowed vegetation, excavated a ditch, and created a new one-mile-long berm to isolate a wetland area from tidal action for duck hunting purposes. Under the settlement, the owners must fully restore the tidal wetland and pay $20,000. The settlement resolves one of the most significant environmental wetland violations to occur in recent years, according to Kim. Contact: Kimberly Kim (415) 557-3686
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