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Making Way for Salmon : Fish passage barriers removed from streams

NOTE: This overview of the 5 Counties Salmonid Conservation Program was published in 2009 in the final edition of California Coastal COnservancy's magazine, California Coast & Ocean.

In 2001, a small miracle occurred in a stream south of the city of Arcata: the salmon came back. Lots of them. The stream, called Morrison Gulch, flows into Jacoby Creek, which empties into Humboldt Bay. Biologists knew it had once been spawning ground for salmon, because for several years they had counted hundreds trying to make their way upstream to mate--600 in one winter alone. But an old culvert under Quarry Road blocked the way; not one fish could make the jump into it from the pool below. Faced with such a barrier, some fish will try to find other places to spawn; others will die of exhaustion from their futile attempt to reach historic spawning grounds.

Then, in August 2001, the County replaced the Quarry Road culvert with a wider one and regraded the stream above and below to raise the channel, allowing the fish to move freely through the new culvert. With the barrier gone, the salmon moved right back into the stream. That winter, biologists counted 70 coho returning to spawn, and the following winter they observed 238 adults and 116 redds (spawning nests).

What happened in the Jacoby Creek watershed is happening, or beginning to happen, in many watersheds along the coast from Del Norte County to Monterey. In the past ten years, through collaborative efforts by counties, state and federal agencies, private landowners, and nonprofit organizations, almost 300 miles of streams have been reopened to salmon and restored to conditions favorable to the fishes’ survival. At a time when everything else seems to be going wrong for West Coast salmon, this achievement is a ray of sunshine.

Locked Out

Culverts and other small stream barriers may seem trivial compared to the large and intractable difficulties salmon face--drought, water diversions, hydropower dams, changes in ocean productivity--but there are so many of them that they have effectively locked fish out of huge areas of spawning habitat. A 2004 report by the Coastal Conservancy identified more than 19,000 barriers in California’s coastal watersheds, at least 1,400 of them severe or impassable.

Even obstacles that are not completely impassable to adult salmon can exhaust the fish before they reach spawning grounds, or keep juveniles, which can’t jump as high as adults, from reaching tributaries that serve as safe havens during floods. “It’s a huge problem,” said Tom Weseloh, North Coast manager for California Trout. “If you’ve got a barrier at the mouth of a watershed, the whole watershed is impaired.”

Long before people knew about the life cycles of anadromous fish, they understood that salmon needed to be able to move freely up- and downstream. In his 2003 book King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon, geologist David R. Montgomery wrote of a 12th-century English statute requiring that English rivers “be kept free of obstructions so that a well-fed three-year-old pig could stand sideways in the stream without touching either side.” Pigs were not at issue; the purpose was to protect salmon.

Despite many such laws and restrictions over the centuries, the needs of fish have rarely been considered when roads and other structures were built, until recently. In California’s early days, many coastal roads were cut right next to creeks for the logging industry, and streams were constricted and blocked by pipes and culverts. In 1935, federal fisheries biologists surveying streams in the Klamath and Shasta National Forests reported that culverts were cutting off salmon from the Klamath River and other main streams, and recommended that small bridges be used instead. They were ignored.

Those roads, usually built quickly and cheaply, have eroded over the years, spilling sediment into the creeks and causing creekbanks to fail. During heavy rains, the old culverts block water and sediment flow, causing floods. But quick fixes cost less up front than bringing back a more natural streamflow, and because there are so many barriers, removing any one of them seemed a waste of time and money--until 1996 and 1997, when coho salmon on the North and Central Coasts were listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Without working rail, cargo or viable market, Humboldt Bay harbor isn’t much

12/27/12

MY WORD

 Mr. Bressman’s loyalty to his livelihood and his harbor is to be commended and admired (“We can’t afford to just sit on our harbor,” Times-Standard, Dec. 22, Page A4).

  However it is my opinion that the adage “build it and they will come” is excellent fodder for a movie script but very thin forage anywhere else. There is absolutely no argument with the fact that Humboldt Bay forms an excellent, if somewhat limited in draft-depth, harbor. But the same can be said about several hundred other sites around the world; say, for example, Kwajalein Atoll. An excellent, fully enclosed harbor, ideal for anchoring vessels, but no one would consider building a port there.

  A successful port requires many things, including a source of outgoing cargo, a market for incoming cargo, a transportation net to move cargo to or from elsewhere and the ability to compete economically with other ports in the same country, as well as modern cargo handling facilities. Other things are helpful, such as existing vessel supply facilities (ship chandlers), shipyards capable of emergency repair work on large vessels, recreation and service facilities for onshore crew leave. With the exception of an adequate, trained and willing work force, Humboldt Bay can boast of none of these, nor any hope of any of them soon.

  It is more than time to face a few facts. There is no rail connection from here to anywhere, nor is there any sign of repair to that ruined utility any time in the near or distant future. The railroad served one, and only one commodity, redwood. 

 That commodity is now long gone, and in view of the many cries for preservation from the tree-huggers, probably never to return. Truck transportation is now adequate to serve the present needs of the immediate area, but expanding it to the extent needed by a modern port facility would overwhelm the present network with no signs of any real improvements, such as the much debated but nonactive widening of 101 through Richardson Grove.

  The direct route inland — truck or rail — to the East through the mountains is a silly pipe dream involving a vast amount of engineering marvels such as large bridges, many switchbacks and tunnels of huge size in order to accommodate trainloads of containers stacked two-high. Such an enterprise faces an expense of many billions of dollars and is certainly not feasible in the face of the present harbor situation. 

 The Longshore labor agreement negotiations of the early ’60s in San Francisco spent many, many hours and days struggling with the problems occasioned by the newly agreed 8-hour guarantee, as opposed to the traditional 4-hour callout. After one year under the new guarantee, one port on the coast boasting only a tiny fraction of the entire work force — Eureka — consumed a huge proportion of the negotiators’ time because of the death of the redwood trade. Special travel rates, meal allowances and board payments had to be worked out so as to provide work opportunities in other ports for the Eureka workforce.

  They still exist today for the same reason, and many, many experts were consulted on the future of that port at the time.
  I know, because I was there as one of the employer negotiators. I have spent 33 years as an employee of the Pacific Maritime Association, the last 25 as Southern California Area Manager, responsible for the payment of wages, training, safety programs and day-to-day industrial relations for the four ports of San Diego, Los Angeles, Long Beach and Port Hueneme.

  John D. MacEvoy resides in Cutten.

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Concerns Grow Over Flooding From a NJ River That’s Also a Superfund Site

11/13/12

The Passaic River in New Jersey isn’t one of those waterways with its source in a pristine mountain lake.

From its spring in Morris County to its mouth at Newark Bay, the Passaic’s shores are lined by suburban subdivisions, factories and depots.

The lower part of the Passaic is a federal Superfund site: during the Vietnam War, Agent Orange was manufactured on the Newark Waterfront.

When Sandy struck, the Passaic spilled its banks, sweeping into residential streets and mixing with waste from backed-up sewers. Dozens of houses were flooded.

“It’s stuff that’s washing into these people’s homes. And we don’t have a clue what that mix looks like,” said Ana Baptista, director of environmental programs at the non-profit Ironbound Community Corporation.

Baptista said the government has done a poor job informing people with flooded basements about the potential health risks.

“The only advisories that I saw were the advisories from the city condemning the properties because of flood and structural damage to their properties,” Baptista said. “No one came out and told them, be careful with the flood water because it could be contaminated.”

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection hasn’t directly addressed what’s in the water that has flooded homes. When asked about the flooding, the Department told WNYC concerned homeowners should seek testing, but that local authorities were responsible for assessing the risks.

Elias Rodriguez, an Environmental Protection Agency spokesman, said in an email there is no immediate hazard connected with the superfund site, but that “the EPA is continuing to assess impacts from the storm throughout the area and we will reach out to the community to get more information about potential impacts to the community.”

But there may be a long-term health risk, according to Ryan Miller, a research engineer at Rutgers University who has spent two years studying the lower Passaic. Miller said if toxic sediment from the Passaic was churned up by the storm, it’s possible toxins like PCBs ended up in basements.

“Soil particles or sediment particles at the bottom of the river act as colloids, they’re kind of like the car, and the contamination is kind of like the passenger, they bring it along for the ride,” said Miller.

Once inside someone’s basement, dioxins and PCBs can turn into gases, and start to poison the air. Toxicologists say this kind of exposure is dangerous only over a prolonged period of time.

And Miller said the risk that this has happened is probably low. Storm surges from the sea, like the one Sandy caused, tend to destabilize river sediment far less than heavy rains.

Last year, Hurricane Irene’s rains flooded the Passaic, exposing a seam of dioxin- and PCB-tainted sediment in the river at Lyndhurst. The EPA did testing and decided to decontaminate a section of river, but not an adjacent little league ball field.

With more mega-storms predicted for the years ahead, the Passaic will almost certainly flood again. Environmentalists hope the next time, the government will quickly tell citizens what it knows about what’s in the water.

Backyard of Boats

In Humboldt Bay, stories lurk within the rusting beaters and gleaming glories

12/6/12

Cody Hills leans back in the stern of the small boat owned by Humboldt Baykeeper, which is zipping north through the Eureka channel of Humboldt Bay. He looks as relaxed as if he were reclining on his living-room couch. Around him the water crinkles and winks, like smoothed-out foil gift wrap. Two frothy white tracks stretch parallel behind the moving boat, creating a broad path back in time.

Beyond the wake sits the Schneider Dock, which knew the bay when it was a working man’s paradise, full of mills and ships and fishing boats, even whalers, and ferries. The work has dwindled — there are mostly fishing boats now — but stories linger out here, sealed in the grain of old wooden boats, in the iron cells of former war ships like the World War II Navy landing craft Ten Ninety-One, now a civilian museum ship docked north of the Schneider dock, and even in some of the more modern boats.

There are boats in this bay that look like old beaters, ready for retirement in some quiet, forgetting cove. And others, seemingly in good shape, that never leave port. There are nameless boats. There’s a lovingly oiled wooden boat: “Admiral” Jim Blum’s 1965, 49-foot golden-brown crab and tuna boat, the Tempest. Rescue barges. Ordinary old fishing boats, and new ones made by Eureka boat builder Ken Bates. And more.

Hills knows many if not most of them — he’s spent his whole young life so far living and working on the bay, drinking in the lore like an essential nutrient.

Sure, he’s just a kid: 22. But he’s Leroy Zerlang’s kid: Zerlang, also reared on the bay, who owned the Crab Shack at the foot of C Street when Hills was young (he called Hills, to whom he’s been father since Hills was 1, the “Crab Kid”); Zerlang, captain of the Madaket, the oldest boat on the bay, which began as a ferry boat in 1910 and turned into a harbor cruise boat in 1972, after the Samoa Bridge was built rendering ferries useless. Hills learned how to walk on the Madaket and how to row in a little boattethered to the dock at the foot of I Street, outside his childhood home. Three years ago, he became the youngest licensed merchant marine captain in California (just like his dad before him).

Hills works for Brusco Tug & Barge and Knutson Towboat Co. and is one of just four remaining guys who operate tug boats to haul in the big ships. He also works for his dad at Zerlang and Zerlang Marine Services, the family’s boat-repair business on the Samoa Peninsula. The Zerlang boat yard is where volunteers and local boatwright Dave Peterson are helping Veterans for Peace restore the Golden Rule, the little peace-protest ketch that in 1958 tried to storm the Marshall Islands atomic testing grounds.

Veteran Chuck DeWitt, who coordinates that restoration, is piloting the Baykeeper boat that carries Hills, another Veterans for Peace volunteer named Skip Oliver, and a couple of Journal staffers on this late-November morning.

Senator seeks $15 million for tsunami debris

12/8/12

An Alaska senator wants $15 million for tsunami debris cleanup on the West Coast included in a federal disaster relief package for states affected by Superstorm Sandy.

  Sen. Mark Begich said it’s embarrassing that the government of Japan has put more funding toward the debris cleanup than the U.S. government has. He said the impact of debris from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan reaching U.S. shores is as much a natural disaster as a hurricane, drought or wildfire — it’s just unfolding in slow motion. 

 “We have to recognize that it’s different than any other type of disaster because if it’s like Sandy, you see it; it’s right there in your face, everything at once,” he said. “And in this situation it’s kind of like climate change. Things don’t happen overnight, they happen over a period of time, and when it happens and accumulates you look back and say, ‘Why didn’t we do something?’ “We have that option right now to do something,” he said.

  Japan has pledged $5 million for tsunami debris cleanup, more than the entire National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration budget for dealing with marine debris in general in fiscal year 2012. Begich said he considers a three-to-one match of the Japanese funding “the very least” the federal government can do to help cleanup efforts in Alaska, Hawaii, California, Oregon and Washington. 

 It’s not clear just how quickly Congress will take up the aid package, or how big it might be. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said he hasn’t taken a position yet on how much money may be needed for debris cleanup. “There are significant discussions yet to be had but I agree that there is a need for funds to help mitigate the effects of tsunami debris impacting our shores,” he said in a statement.

Some states haven’t yet used their $50,000 grants provided by NOAA earlier this year. In Washington state, for example, after seeing an increase in debris from May through July, officials say things have quieted down and the state’s plan for dealing with the debris calls for conserving resources where possible. NOAA announced the grants to the five West Coast states in July.

In Alaska, the grant’s gone, having gone toward cleanup along 25 miles out of about 2,500 in the state before the weather turned too nasty for crews to be out. The work was done by Gulf of Alaska Keeper, which is dedicated to cleaning marine debris from the Alaska coastline. Monitoring by the group found a huge jump in the weight of debris found at four sites it regularly visits.

“It’s just devastating, just sick,” said the group’s president, Chris Pallister, who worries about the impact of the debris on fish and wildlife.

Tsunami debris is difficult to monitor, given that debris can break up and winds and ocean currents consistently change. And it’s tough to distinguish it from the everyday debris that has been an ongoing problem for coastal communities for years. At least 16 items from among more than 1,400 reports have been firmly traced to the tsunami, including a 20foot boat, pieces of which were recovered earlier this month in Hawaii.

The Japanese government estimated that 1.5 million tons of debris were floating in the ocean in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, but it’s not clear how much is still floating nearly two years on or just what will U.S. shores, when.

NOAA estimates the bulk of what is coming either has arrived or will in the next year or so — but that’s a rough guess. The Japanese government last month predicted the most buoyant debris, such as buoys that littered some Alaska beaches earlier this year, has already arrived. Lumber from houses and boats is expected to begin reaching the West Coast around this month, and mostly submerged debris, like driftwood or waterlogged lumber, is expected around June next year.

In Oregon, after a fairly normal year for debris — save for the massive dock that washed ashore from Japan — a recent storm brought foam and other rubbish onto isolated sections of shoreline, said Chris Havel, spokesman for the state’s Department of Parks and Recreation. State response teams were also recently activated to dispose of a gas can that washed up.

Havel shares Pallister’s concerns about the environmental impact of debris as it breaks up. Unlike in Alaska, where beaches are often remote and treacherous during the fall and winter, beaches in Oregon are largely accessible year-round, and Havel was placing orders earlier this week for another 10,000 bags that will be used in cleanup. He placed his last order in July, but anticipates needing more as the winter wears on.

“We do need resources now, people and money now, to deal with it here at the beginning of a two- to three-year effort,” he said.

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