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Bulletin Board
Water Rights Hearings
Who will get and who will give up the water necessary to meet the objectives in the state's 1995 water quality plan for the Delta will be the subject of water rights hearings to be held this spring. The state board recently completed an environmental impact analysis on implementation of the plan and must now assign responsibility for meeting the plan's flow-dependent objectives. While most recognize the need to sustain the Estuary's endangered fish and environment, few individual water right holders or districts are ecstatic about giving up the precious water necessary to do so. "This is the OJ Simpson trial of the water wars," says the Bay Institute's Gary Bobker. "Every water district is trying to say the glove is in the next guy's backyard." To give affected parties more time to negotiate agreements before coming to the table, the Board recently decided to postpone its March water rights hearings and hold a planning workshop for the hearings this April (see calendar). It also extended the due date for comments on its draft EIR to April 1. Contact: Victoria Whitney (916)653-2516
Cargill's Bad Day in Court
The plaintiffs in a year-and-a half-old lawsuit are celebrating the January 26 decision by a federal judge holding that Cargill Salt violated the Clean Water Act by dumping waste mud from its Newark refining plant into the waters of Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge. "This decision is very important to the South Bay," says Florence LaRiviere of the Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge, which filed the suit along with S.F.BayKeeper. Cargill's Jill Singleton says the company is "surprised and puzzled" by the judge's decision. Cargill, which has used the waste site for 50 years, maintains that the waste mud from its salt refining process is contained behind levees, and that there is no discharge into the marsh adjacent to Mowry Slough. The judge has not yet made a ruling on penalties and remediation requirements. Singleton says Cargill will appeal.
Sonar Secrets
Beams of sound bouncing off the Bay bottom recently yielded the most detailed maps yet of the dunes, rocks, ridges and canyons under the water. The U.S. Geological Survey is employing this sonar technology - known as swath-mapping - to map Bay contours more accurately for both navigational purposes and for research on how sediments and pollutants move around underwater and habitats for Bay crabs and other bottom-dwellers change. Swath-mapping, done from a ship, can produce both flat and 3-D maps of areas 800 feet wide in a single pass. It can also pick out objects as small as a 12-pack of soda - far more precision than the 25-foot-sunken sailboats picked out via earlier mapping methods. The Survey's David Cacchione says the new mapping can tell us a lot about how material transports along the Bay bottom, whereas before "it's only been guesses and models about how that works," according to a recent San Jose Mercury News article. Scientists have discovered, for example, that an area of sand dunes north of Fort Mason has eroded by as much as 30-feet since 1951. Cacchione says the dunes are apparently being smoothed away by strong tidal currents diverted around the big pile of dredged material dumped off Alcatraz. Scientists say the disposal site started as a 165-foot-deep hole and grew into a 50-foot-high hill. The new mapping has also revealed the extent of three rocks slated for topping because of their hazard to passing ships, and a field of boulders off Angel Island. Follow-up studies will look into some of the discoveries in more detail. Contact: David Cacchione (650)329-5481
State Runoff Policy
The feds gave conditional approval to the state's proposed program for controlling runoff and stormwater pollution from cities, farms and forests along the California coast this January, but found the program lacking in several ways. The California Coastal Commission and the State Water Resources Control Board submitted this coastal nonpoint source pollution control program to U.S. EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in September 1995 to comply with Coastal Zone Act Reauthorization Amendments. The proposed program updates the existing statewide Nonpoint Source Program, rather than creating a separate program dealing exclusively with coastal waters. In findings released January 8 (see Now in Print), the feds say the submittal does not adequately describe how pollution control measures will be implemented and incorporated in the state's programs and what will happen if voluntary control efforts fail. In particular, the feds are asking the state to identify their implementation activities more fully, including providing for evaluation, feedback, public review and program adjustments. Conditional approval will allow the state to continue to receive federal funding for the program while they work on improvements. Contact: Sam Ziegler (415)744-1990
Harbor Seals on the Rocks
Though environmentalists feared a retrofit of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge might disturb sensitive seals on Castro Rocks below, Caltrans has now addressed most of their concerns. The $375 million retrofit will include extensive work on bridge piers that are just 60 yards from the rocks - one of the few large seal haul-out sites left in the Bay. Up to a quarter of the Bay's population of harbor seals (estimated at about 400) use the sunny rocks to nurse their pups and escape the chilly water as their coats regrow after molting. Environmentalists worried that the loud construction noises might cause the notoriously timid seals to bolt or abandon pups, and interfere with the critical molting process. Caltrans received an incidental harassment permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service, agreeing to suspend work between February 1 and June 1 to avoid the pupping season. Not good enough, said the environmentalists, because the seals' molting period can continue into August. A coalition of groups, spearheaded by the Earth Island Institute, threatened to sue. The feds issued a revised permit last month, extending the "no work" period through August 1. Earth Island's Mark Berman emphasizes the coalition doesn't want to delay the retrofit work, but says the two sides still haven't resolved several issues, including a monitoring program. Contact: Earth Island Institute (415)788-3666
New Homes for Dirty Mud
An effort to pin down some solid homes for dredged material that's "a little too dirty to put back in the aquatic environment" is finally gathering momentum, according to the state Coastal Conservancy's Neal Fishman. Though a grant to identify and develop sites for rehandling or confining both semi-clean and "chemically challenged" material was awarded to the Port of Oakland two years ago, regional interests working with the port have only recently whittled down the potential site list. Dirty mud hosts still on the table are sites at the Ports of Richmond and San Francisco, at the West Contra Costa Landfill, and on the former Alameda military base. Sites aside, regional interests are still trying to decide how to spend the rest of the largely-unspent grant money. "We're talking about how much to emphasize coming up with innovative new markets, such as industrial and roadbed uses, for the mud - i.e. really trying to make it into a product - versus more traditional uses such as landfill cover," says Fishman. "I think we'll end up with a phased approach, so we don't go too far down blind alleys." Fishman added that January's CALFED grant to the Conservancy of $1 million to explore wetland restoration and possible beneficial reuse of dredged material at Marin's Hamilton base will also help spur the search for disposal sites. Contact: Neal Fishman (510)286-4181
EIR Overload
Reading and responding to the slew of EIR/EIS pages on the table for this spring promises to keep many Bay-Delta bureaucrats and stakeholders at the espresso counter. Already overtopping the in-box is the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on implementation of the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act (released in November 1997 with comments due April 17, 1998). Issues addressed include Central Valley fish protection and restoration, federal water project operations, water conservation and transfers, and resolving competing demands on CVP water.
Poised to land on top of these tomes are two others. The first is a final EIS/EIR and draft management plan for the long- term management strategy (LTMS) for Bay dredging (currently scheduled to be released this March, with public meetings on the plan due soon - see calendar). At issue here are where and how to dredge and dispose of the 300 million cubic yards of sediment slated for removal from the Bay floor over the next 50 years (the preferred alternative recommends 40% goes to the ocean disposal site, 40% to upland areas, and 20% to the Bay - a big change from the 80% dumped off Alcatraz in recent decades).
Last but not least is the much awaited EIR/EIS on three alternatives developed by CALFED for better managing Delta waters, improving water supply reliability, ensuring levee system integrity and restoring the environment (look for this bible mid-March). CALFED is releasing the report without a preferred alternative, pleading the need for more research. Contact: CALFED (916)657-2666; BUREC (CVPIA) (916) 978-5105; U.S.EPA (LTMS) (415)744-1984
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