Point Reyes Light- June 22, 2000

Army Corps airs six fixes for Bolinas Lagoon

Inching toward a plan to restore sediment-choked Bolinas Lagoon, the Army Corps of Engineers earlier this month announced that it is in the late stages of compiling a list of six possible alternatives for the work.

The announcement from Army Corps planner Cindy Bowen on June 9 sets in motion a formal review process in which the Corps intends to distill the six projects into one coherent plan for increasing the tidal flow in the lagoon.

Estimates are that the lagoon has lost a third of its sub-tidal, deep-water habitat in the last 30 years.

The Army Corps has also set a November deadline for incorporating the final plan into a draft environmental impact report and statement, at which time the whole business will be sent to Corps Headquarters in Washington DC for final approval.

At this month's meeting of the lagoon's technical advisory committee, planner Bowen told advisors that the Corps in mid-July will meet with a county-appointed panel to narrow a considerably large field of six individual alternatives, plus five additional options that remain on the table.

Panel will evaluate

Marin Open Space District - which owns and is the primary manager of the 1,100-acre lagoon - has already appointed the ten-member Habitat Evaluation Expert Panel that includes Audubon Canyon Ranch biologist Greg de Nevers, Point Reyes National Seashore biologist Sarah Allen, Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary manager Ed Ueber, and state Fish and Game biologist John Mello.

The six main options the panel will consider include:

• Dredging sediment from the Bolinas Channel back towards Pine Gulch Creek.
• Removing fill from a combination of former wetland areas along Highway 1 and Dipsea Road.
• Dredging out a silted-up channel through the center of Kent Island.
• Removing the alder-and-willow forested delta of Pine Gulch Creek.
• Opening the channel of Seadrift Lagoon and further dredging the South Lagoon Channel near Stinson Beach.
• Dredging the lagoon's main channel and North Basin - a large area near the Bolinas Wye.

The five additional options include various combinations of those above.

Permanent fix

Naturalist de Nevers said on Wednesday he anticipates that the final project will be a combination of alternatives. "Clearly what will come out of this is a combination," he said. "What we want to do is find a project that will change the hydrology of the lagoon so that it becomes a self-sustaining system. We don't want to have to do this every 30 or 50 years."

The Army Corps and the Open Space District plan to conduct a public meeting in August to update residents and get public input. In addition, the public will get the chance to comment on the Corps' refined proposal in a public hearing on the draft environmental impact report later in the summer, advisory committee chairwoman Andrea di Marco told The Light.

The lagoon is thought by many scientists to suffer from accelerated sedimentation because of logging and animal grazing that began in the mid-1800s, as well as the construction of homes on the northern end of the Seadrift sandspit.

Tons of dirt

The US Geological Survey have estimated that as much as 138,000 tons of sediment have entered the lagoon yearly from the ocean, while additional sediment from local creeks has amounted to as much as 4,900 tons per year.

Other studies have estimated that from the 1930s to the 1960s the lagoon cumulatively lost as much as 700,000 cubic feet per year of tidal capacity.

Funding from Congress, the state, Marin county, and local contributors has already covered the costs of research and environmental review for the restoration plan. After they approve the final plan, Army Corps officials will ask Congress in early 2001 for funds to pay for the project's engineering design and contracting. However, upwards of $15 million will be needed to cover the physical work, vaguely set to start in 2004.

- Gregory Foley

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