LAUREL MARCUS
IS IT REALLY NECESSARY to put people out of work to protect our environment? Must we sacrifice natural resources and wildlife for the sake of jobs and industry? A major marsh restoration project now under way on San Francisco Bay shows that such a choice need not be made.
This pioneering project was made possible by a diverse coalition that has united environmentalists, industries, labor leaders, government agencies, and elected officials. It demonstrates how economic and environmental needs can be integrated, with benefits all around and no losses; and how a unique political coalition can form around a creative solution.
Sound too good to be true? No such coalition was envisioned at the project's inception. It was accomplished by means of innovative thinking and a diligent effort to understand and accommodate the needs of all whose interests were involved.
The Sonoma Baylands Tidal Marsh Restoration project, developed by the California State Coastal Conservancy and the Sonoma Land Trust, will restore a hayfield to its historic condition as a tidal wetland and use more than 2.5 million cubic yards of clean dredged material in the process. This dredged material will come from the Port of Oakland, allowing the deepening of channels to accommodate larger container ships. San Francisco Bay will gain a 322-acre tidal wetland designed especially to aid two endangered species, the salt marsh harvest mouse and the California clapper rail. The port and the region will benefit by increased economic activity.
THE SONOMA BAYLANDS project began in 1988 as a wetland and open space preservation project. The nonprofit Sonoma Land Trust had negotiated a purchase option for a large hay ranch near the mouth of the Petaluma River and had approached the Coastal Conservancy for funding to acquire the property. The Land Trust seeks to protect agricultural and environmentally sensitive lands in a rapidly urbanizing county by outright purchase or acquisition of conservation easements. The Conservancy undertakes projects toward these same purposes, as well as for public access. Prior to acquiring the property, the Conservancy and the Land Trust prepared a resource enhancement plan to identify natural values and the possibilities for their restoration.
Like much of the north bay shoreline, the hay ranch had once been a tidal wetland, part of the vast, productive marshlands that bordered San Francisco Bay. About 90 percent of these historical tidal marshes have been diked and drained for agriculture or filled for urban development. Some have been permanently lost. Others could become wetlands again.
The enhancement plan found that the property's southern 322 acres, which adjoin the bay, were suitable for restoration as mudflats and salt marsh. The mudflats would feed numerous bird and fish species, and the salt marsh could help the salt marsh harvest mouse and California clapper rail to survive.
Such restoration, however, would require far more than flooding the site with tidal water. The hayfield had subsided as much as four feet below sea level. Salt marshes occur at three and a half feet above sea level. Therefore, up to seven and a half feet of new mud would need to accumulate before the marsh could form. Left to natural tidal sedimentation, this build-up would take many years-years the endangered species did not have.
Joan Vilms, project manager for the Sonoma Land Trust, and I realized that the process could be speeded up by bringing in some clean fill, such as clean dredged material. We discussed the option for several months, as our enhancement plan neared completion and we contemplated ways to fund its implementation. We understood that if we pursued this option, we would have to work with the industrial ports and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, rather than just with the typical supporters of environmental and wetland projects. This idea was both intriguing and frightening.
Both of us knew from other experiences that we would have to negotiate very carefully so that the needs of the ports and the Corps to dispose of dredged material did not subvert our wetland restoration project. But as the Conservancy and the Land Trust would design the project, and as ownership of the site would stay with the Land Trust during the negotiation period, we felt we could afford the risk. One day as we sat on the levee that extended between the verdant marsh on its bayward side and the hayfield to the north, we decided to take a chance. We would try working with the Corps and the ports to use dredged material, but remain ready to abandon this idea if the project veered away from its original intent.
In 1990 we convinced our superiors and the Coastal Conservancy board of the logic of our arguments. The Conservancy approved the enhancement plan, authorized $1.5 million to the Sonoma Land Trust to purchase the entire 830-acre ranch, and provided $250,000 for a design plan for the southern piece of the property. Together, the Conservancy and the Land Trust assembled a multidisciplinary team consisting of wetland ecologist Ted Winfield, tidal hydrologists Philip Williams and Joan Florsheim, and Rick Olejniczak from Gahagan and Bryant Associates, a dredged material engineering firm. This team began a detailed engineering and biological design for the marsh. It studied not only the site's physical conditions, but also the outcome of earlier wetland projects in the bay.
During this time, the Port of Oakland was in the midst of a battle with many interest groups over proposed sites for disposal of some 6.6 million cubic yards of clean dredged mud. Until acceptable sites were found, the port could not proceed with an essential channel-deepening project to accommodate larger ships. The port is San Francisco Bay's largest maritime shipping center and the nation's fourth-largest port. With its related industries, it employs over 100,000 people and fuels over $5 billion in regional economic activity. As the debate over dredging wore on, shipping lines began to use other ports, and Oakland's share of the maritime market dwindled.
The Corps of Engineers, which is primarily responsible for dredging in navigable waters, had proposed to dump the mud back into the bay near Alcatraz Island, as it had been doing for years. It had also proposed disposal in the ocean, near Half Moon Bay. Both proposals had evoked angry opposition from commercial and sport fisherman, environmentalists, and even bay swimmers. The Half Moon Bay Fishermen's Association won a court battle to protect its productive fishing grounds. By 1989 all sides in the conflict were embittered and angry, and no solution was in sight. Even before our design plan for the Baylands was completed, the Corps and the port began to inquire about our idea of using dredged materials to restore a marsh.
THE DESIGN TEAM had identified two alternative ways to proceed at the Sonoma Baylands. Both required that a new levee be built and the old perimeter levee breached, flooding the site with tidal water. Beyond that, the restoration job either could be left to the process of tidal sedimentation, which would take some 35 to 50 years, or that process could be considerably shortened by raising the elevation of the site with suitable dredged material, allowing a vegetated marsh to form within 10 to 25 years.
The design team concluded that the Baylands would benefit from 2.5 to 2.8 million cubic yards of dredged mud. The exact quantity would depend upon the ratio of sands, which are larger and take up more room, to the smaller silts and clays. This amount of material was significant: the project could take over a third of the mud that was to be dredged from the Port of Oakland.
Our cost estimates were encouraging, showing that barging muds 25 miles from the Port of Oakland would be cost-competitive with barging mud to the most recently proposed ocean disposal site 70 miles outside the Golden Gate. The primary environmental issue remaining was to assure that all the material placed at the Baylands was clean and passed the rigorous ocean disposal testing.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board oversee testing programs, assure the validity of test results, and determine the suitability of the materials for disposal in bay, ocean, and wetland environments. They base their conclusions on the results of chemical testing and the results of bioassay tests which evaluate the toxicity of water and sediment from the dredged materials to various species of zooplankton. Only dredged material deemed suitable for aquatic disposal would be allowed at the Baylands.
In addition, to make sure that chemicals from Oakland's material did not bioaccumulate in wetland plants and animals, the Corps grew these plants and animals in the sediments for a year in a laboratory. Results of these tests showed no significant uptake and concentration of persistent chemicals, even for dredged materials that were not considered suitable for ocean disposal. These tests assured us that we would not be creating a problem that would appear many years from now. As a matter of fact, much of the dredged material was cleaner than the samples tested from the existing natural marshes near the Baylands site.
A NEW IDEA THAT CAN HELP to resolve a crisis while serving the purposes of many divergent interests can quickly gain support and bring opposing factions together. The Conservancy held a meeting in 1991 for all concerned elected officials, government entities, special interest groups, and the ports to discuss the Baylands and how to implement the project as a part of the bay dredging program. The response was surprising. The entire Bay Area Congressional delegation, federal and state regulatory agencies, environmental groups, and ports expressed support; the Corps of Engineers, however, was not encouraging and reminded everyone that it lacked specific Congressional authorization to undertake the Baylands project. Corps policy did not favor wetland creation as an option for disposal of dredged mud. Bound by a tradition of aquatic disposal and a national policy to implement the cheapest alternative, the Corps adamantly opposed the idea.
At this point, the Conservancy began a campaign to create a coalition of allies strong enough to persuade the Corps to shift away from its traditional policy. I approached all parties who held an interest in the dredging of the ports: organized labor, business and development, shipping lines, the individual ports, regulatory agencies, as well as Congressional and state legislative staff. The goal was to convince them that the wetlands project was the key to resolving the dredging impasse and that their assistance was crucial. This process of persuasion required patience, tolerance, and listening to numerous opinions about the other involved parties.
The overwhelming support for the project by environmental groups, especially Save San Francisco Bay Association, Sierra Club, and Natural Heritage Institute, was a clear bargaining chip. These groups had successfully stopped the port in its previous attempts at dredging and had steadfastly opposed aquatic disposal. The Port of Oakland cautiously endorsed the Baylands, unsure of how much it might cost but very willing to help if that would aid its dredging project. Slowly, many different parties came to see the Baylands not just as a good compromise to get the port dredged, but as a good idea for reusing dredged material. Still, it would take an act of Congress to win the support of the Corps.
In 1992, the Bay Dredging Action Coalition (BDAC), newly formed by community, business, and labor leaders to resolve the dredging crisis, made the Baylands a cornerstone of its political agenda. The coalition's letterhead listed shipping lines, banks, chambers of commerce, numerous trade unions, and others with an interest in seeing the Port of Oakland channel deepening proceed. The project now had the broad-based backing it needed.
While environmental groups supported the project, it was largely this powerful coalition that pushed the Baylands through the system, helping the Bay Area Congressional delegation to overcome the Corps' resistance. In the 1992 Water Resources Development Act, Congress directed the Corps to build the Baylands project. Specifically it instructed the Corps to complete final engineering designs, to build the first stage of the project, including the new levee, and to place clean dredged material on the site for the purpose of restoring a wetland.
The federal public works system that for so many years had produced dams, flood control projects, and other environmentally damaging developments, treated this major habitat restoration project as one of its own. The pork barrel system was made to work for environmental improvements-a change that could only have happened in the San Francisco Bay Area, and even here only because of the dedicated and powerful Congressional delegation-Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Congressmen George Miller, Ron Dellums, Vic Fazio, and Norm Mineta-and the coalition of business and labor forces. In the waning days of the Bush presidency, the Baylands slipped into this system.
FOLLOWING THS VICTORY, support for the Baylands became even stronger. In 1993, a major push was made to get the Corps to begin the work authorized by Congress and have the Baylands ready on the same schedule as the Port of Oakland channel deepening project. Individuals who previously had been on opposite sides of every major issue regarding the bay attended a meeting with representatives from Corps headquarters and voiced unanimous support for the Baylands. The Corps agreed to proceed with the next steps in the process. All the years of hard effort, persuasion, and alliance building were finally paying off.
Then a very strange thing happened. Just as we had persuaded the Corps of the benefits of the Baylands project, the federal agency with principal responsibility for the protection and recovery of endangered species responded to the Baylands with a very negative letter and recommended that the project be denied. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requested a number of additions to the project, the most controversial of which introduced the assumption that tidal marsh restoration required mitigation for environmental impacts. Specifically, the Baylands hayfield retained low spots that ponded water in very wet years and thus created "seasonal" wetlands. The Corps had determined that 56 acres of such wetlands existed on the site. The Conservancy and the other agencies involved had agreed that a fully tidal 300-acre wetland would provide such high value habitat that it would more than compensate for the loss of these occasionally ponded hayfields. But Fish and Wildlife recommended that several hundred more acres of seasonal wetlands be created on another site as mitigation. This was a very expensive condition to accommodate, and it set a precedent that would make other future restoration projects impossible.
Perhaps the most difficult part of this request was its timing. The Fish and Wildlife Service had participated in the Baylands project for four years and had contributed to both the concept and the specific design. Why did it only now bring up such a fundamental issue? We were dumbfounded.
The other agencies-the EPA, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the California Department of Fish and Game, and even the Corps-stood firmly in opposition to the Service's contention that tidal restoration projects required mitigation. Environmental groups, however, were split into two camps by this new requirement. On one side were those who had fought ocean and bay dumping and saw the Baylands as an environmentally beneficial answer to the dredging dilemma. On the other were people passionately concerned with seasonal wetlands, fearful of their destruction by future tidal restoration projects. After many emotionally charged months of debate, the Conservancy brokered a compromise. It offered to make an effort to restore seasonal wetlands on another nearby 250-acre parcel, a project consistent with our future plans for this site, and to add 24 acres of seasonally ponded area to the Baylands site. These concessions would not be permit conditions and therefore would not set a precedent for requiring mitigation for other wetland restoration projects. Finally both the Fish and Wildlife Service and the environmental organizations that had supported its position withdrew their opposition to the project.
The final victory occurred in a particularly grand fashion. In December 1993, President Bill Clinton endorsed the Baylands project as a part of the Port of Oakland dredging effort. In the wake of large-scale military base closures, the port was seen as especially vital to the local economy. The dedication and hard work of Congressional representatives, most particularly Congressman Ron Dellums and Lee Halterman of his staff, gave the Baylands the boost it needed. A White House task force was created to speed the dredging and the Baylands project along. Local Corps staff, many of whom had long supported the project despite the reluctance at their headquarters, formed a partnership with the Conservancy that has since brought the project to construction.
THE SONOMA BAYLANDS is more than just a tidal restoration project or a creative answer to a port's dredging problem. It represents an ideal: the transformation of a situation in which animosity and conflict dominate to a peaceful and beneficial settlement, backed by a successful political coalition. In California, where divisions are often stronger than alliances, the Baylands is a unique victory, demonstrating the ability of diverse people to agree, cooperate, and accomplish great things together.
The Baylands also owes its success to the power of the individual to make a difference. It began not as a government-mandated program or policy directive but as the vision of two people. This vision was reinforced by an enthusiastic design team, and it became a reality through the hard work of many people in government and private organizations, all of whom were ready to embrace a new and useful idea and to combine efforts to achieve its implementation.
The inclusion of a large-scale marsh restoration in an industrial port dredging project has opened the door for other similar projects nationwide. When evaluated only as a dredged material disposal site, the Baylands costs slightly more (five percent) than disposal at the newly designated ocean site 60 miles outside the Golden Gate. However, this economic evaluation does not account for the value of creating a 300-acre tidal wetland. When the value of the habitat is included, the Baylands is the clear bargain compared to aquatic disposal, which produces no environmental benefits.
The port's dredging project was expedited by the inclusion of this environmentally beneficial feature. All involved agencies were willing to accelerate their efforts to make the Baylands project work. Without the marsh project, the port could well have faced many more years of litigation and delays.
Largely in response to the Baylands proposal, the Long-Term Management Strategy (LTMS), a 50-year blueprint for disposal of material dredged from San Francisco Bay, includes wetland creation as an option. The LTMS agencies-EPA, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the Corps, and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission-have all endorsed this new concept in reuse of dredged material.
On July 18, 1994, Vice President Al Gore presided over a dedication ceremony for the Baylands. He spoke enthusiastically of the project as a national model. "The environment wins, the economy wins because you get a better port with more traffic and you create jobs in the process, so employment wins. The fourth winner is the nation because the project sets an unusual example of business, labor, and environmental groups working jointly to steer this innovative project through the bureaucratic morass." How remarkably far a simple idea can go.
Laurel Marcus, Sonoma Baylands project manager for the State Coastal
Conservancy, has initiated and coordinated numerous wetland and watershed
restoration projects on the California coast.
[Published in California Coast & Ocean magazine, Autumn 1994 (Vol. 10, No.2), by the California State Coastal Conservancy.]