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Bulletin Board

CRITICAL HABITAT for the threatened Alameda whipsnake and red-legged frog will be set aside under new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans. The service has proposed designating more than 5 million acres in 31 counties for the frog, and has designated seven areas in five counties as critical for the snake. In both cases, only federal lands or property that receives federal funds or requires a federal permit will be affected by the designation. The service is under a court-order to designate the frog habitat by December 29.

UP TO 90 PERCENT of the lead in San Francisco Bay is the legacy of long obsolete leaded gasoline concludes a decade-long study by U.C. Santa Cruz scientists. The study cast new light on lead cycling in estuaries and indicated that lead from leaded gas - which has not been sold since 1992 - will continue to wash into the Bay from Central Valley rivers for decades to come.

THE SACRAMENTO SPLITTAIL has won a reprieve. In late September, a federal judge gave US Fish & Wildlife six months to reconsider its listing of the fish as threatened, rather than simply removing it from the list following a June ruling that the February 1999 listing was unlawfully arbitrary. THE FBI AND EPA have joined the Regional Board in investigating C&H Sugar for discharging wastewater containing elevated levels of chlorine into the Carquinez Strait and failing to report it accurately. The investigation was prompted when the Board discovered discrepancies between data stored at C & H and the company's monthly reports submitted to the Board. In the meantime, the 9,000-member California Sportfishing Alliance plans to sue C&H for violations dating back four years, involving chlorine, mercury, lead, chloroform, selenium and coliform bacteria. C&H denies the allegations.

THE LATEST EFFORT to offer technical assistance to grassroots watershed groups is well underway with an assessment of the needs of Bay Area creek and watershed groups. Funded by an EPA and State Water Resources Control Board grant to the Friends of the Estuary, the Watershed Resources Assessment Center (WARC) will assist grassroots groups in developing scientifically valid monitoring and assessment programs to help them achieve their watershed goals and to create partnerships with local and state agencies. In August WARC sent a questionnaire to grassroots groups and agencies throughout the Bay Area. Next WARC will hold a series of large regional workshops-one for rural areas, one for urban-rural, and one for urban areas-to demonstrate watershed assessment techniques. Contact: Laurel Marcus (510) 832-2760

TWO CREWS SPRAYED SPARTINA in the Oro Loma area of the Hayward Regional Shoreline early this October, kicking off a regionwide war against the spread of smooth cordgrass (spartina alterniflora). This invader from the Atlantic coast currently infests mudflats and wetland zones at the Hayward park and the mouth of Alameda Creek, with footholds springing up throughout the South Bay and creeping north. This September, East Bay Regional Parks and four other agencies signed an agreement to fight off this pest plant, which hybridizes with the native cordgrass, chokes tidal channels, and colonizes open mudflats essential to migratory shorebirds, estuarine fish, and intertidal organisms. As part of the agreement, agencies are financing the spraying of a glosphate compound called Rodeo that stops the plant's growth process. According to the park district's Pete Alexander, other methods, namely burning and physical removal,have been tried with little success. Spraying has been limited to Sept 1 through January 31, in order to avoid the nesting activities of the endangered California clapper rail. Contact: Ned MacKay (510)544-2208

A COOL $25 MILLION FOR THE CARGILL salt ponds was approved by the Governor this fall, an amount that is supposed to signal California's commitment to splitting the roughly $300 million cost of 19,000 acres with the feds. Government managers and biologists, not to mention S.F. airport planners, have been eyeballing the ponds for the largest wetland restoration project in Bay history. The idea is that the government will buy the property and the airport will pay the $200 million to restore it as mitigation for its proposed runway expansion into Bay waters. Myriad uncertainties remain. Will the government actually cough up the big bucks for the purchase? Who should pay for cleaning out the more unsavory by-products of salt production? Will salt-pond dependent shore and waterbirds be displaced as the tidal marshes advance into their turf? And how can watchdogs ensure that the big government buy-in doesn't somehow taint the still fledgling analysis of alternative runway schemes and environmental impacts?

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