After three years of work, a thick pile of studies and $400,000 in taxpayer
funding, a state task force formed to repair the Russian River hasn’t reached
agreement on how to do it.
Some members of the broad-based coalition don’t even think the river needs
fixing. ”We don’t feel the river’s broken,” said Johanna Vanoni, a
Geyserville rancher who represents the Russian River Property Owners
Association, a property rights group.
She and others say costly efforts to restore the river could do more harm
than good. ”There’s no need to take over God’s work on this river,” Vanoni
said.
But other members disagree. ”Anybody who says the river isn’t broken is
not in touch with reality,” said David Bolling, who heads Friends of the
Russian River, a Sonoma County environmental group.
He said the river shows the effects of man’s abuse — it has been dammed,
dredged, diverted, channeled and injected with urban wastewater. ”It’s in a
seriously degraded condition,” Bolling said.
Unless something’s done to change the trend, the river’s once-famous
fishery will be lost forever, Bolling warned.
The stakes are high. The Russian River system is a primary water source for
500,000 residents of Sonoma, Mendocino and Marin counties, and demands on the
system continue to grow. The federal government is considering protected
status for the river’s Coho salmon and steelhead, a move that could limit
water diversions and restrict future development.
The state’s Coastal Conservancy set up the Sonoma County task force in 1991
to protect river resources and provide more public access. A similar group is
studying the river in Mendocino County.
The effort, known as the Russian River Resource Enhancement and Public
Access Plan, involves 50 organizations, including environmentalists, property
owners, anglers, farmers, tourism promoters, gravel miners, government
agencies, Indian basket makers and canoeists.
The group is supposed to submit a plan next year to the Sonoma County Board
of Supervisors, although there’s no guarantee that members will reach
consensus.
Critics say the work so far has generated more questions than answers. Much
of the controversy centers on the river’s middle reach, a 10-mile stretch
between Healdsburg and Wohler Bridge in Sonoma County where the coalition is
considering an ambitious ”streamway” plan to reshape the river.
There’s disagreement about what’s wrong with the river and what’s needed to
fix it. There are nagging concerns about what it will cost to restore the
river and who should pay for it. And there’s a flap about who should be
sitting on the Sonoma County panel.
Bolling, who once headed Friends of the River, California’s leading river
preservation group, said it’s not unusual for such efforts to spawn
controversy.
”It is by definition a contentious process,” said Bolling. ”Sometimes a
majority prevails. Sometimes it ends in deadlock.”
Sponsors said the group is making headway and should find agreement on at
least some issues. ”There is more common ground among players than we would
have expected,” said Karen Gaffney, project manager for Circuit Rider
Productions, a Windsor-based nonprofit organization that is guiding the
effort. ”I’m still hoping we can come to consensus on some of the
alternatives.”
The task force has made progress in other areas, including a plan to find
more public access sites along the river.
Much of the group’s work, however, has focused on the middle reach, where
there is a long history of gravel mining in the river’s channel and flood
plain. According to a report commissioned by the task force, dams, channeling
and too much gravel mining caused the river’s bed to deepen as much as 20 feet
in the past 40 years, increasing erosion, threatening bridges, lowering the
water table, damaging wildlife habitat and degrading tributaries where fish
spawn.
The report also said there is a serious threat the river will change course
and break through nearby gravel pits — as has occurred on some other
California rivers -causing further environmental damage.
It proposes to reverse the trend in the middle reach by creating a wider
course that allows the river to meander. The streamway concept would return
the river to a more natural shape, according to backers. The technique would
stabilize the channel, minimize erosion and provide more room for native
vegetation, supporters argue.
But the idea has come under fire from property owners, wildlife officials
and even some environmentalists. Under the plan, excavation crews would carve
into the river’s banks, creating a new terrace between the existing river
channel and higher flood plain.
The streamway then would be replanted with native trees and shrubs.
Ann Maurice, who represents a Mendocino County Indian group and the Ad Hoc
Committee on Clean Water, said such a project would cause ”permanent,
irreparable damage to the ecosystem” by removing natural vegetation and
topsoil.
She said the idea is especially alarming to Indian basket makers because
they rely on the river plants for their traditional art. Streamway backers
can’t guarantee that replanting will be successful, she said.
Maurice questioned the report’s conclusion that the river is downcutting
and said there’s no evidence the streamway plan will help. ”Their purported
cure is far worse than the problems they’re attempting to solve,” she said.
Maurice said the group’s sponsors are pushing the streamway concept and
ignoring other ideas.
Gravel companies and some other river property owners also are skeptical,
raising questions about costs and a potential loss of hundreds of acres of
farmland under the streamway proposal. Gravel producers argue the river’s
channel has stabilized since in-stream mining was halted some years ago and
say there is little danger the river will ”capture” their pits.
State wildlife officials also have voiced concerns about a streamway’s
impacts on habitat along the river.
Gaffney said alternatives to the streamway haven’t been ruled out. The
committee is looking at a variety of ideas, she said, including traditional
flood-control measures and hybrids of different techniques.
She said the streamway system has worked elsewhere as part of an overall
river management program. In some versions of the plan, the loss of natural
vegetation and farmland is minimal, according to a staff report. The group
currently is trying to choose the best options from a list of about 20
proposals, Gaffney said.
Bolling downplayed criticism of the streamway idea and said the concept
shouldn’t be ruled out. ”Right now it’s the only innovative proposal on the
table,” he said. ”It ought to be explored.”
But he agreed there isn’t enough data on the river’s environmental health.
”We don’t have an adequate vision of what restoring a river is all about,”
Bolling said. More study needs to be done on impacts of logging and
agriculture, he said.
Meanwhile, funding for a river project is in limbo. Reps. Lynn Woolsey,
D-Petaluma, and Dan Hamburg, D-Ukiah, sponsored legislation earlier this year
that would have paid for environmental work. But the bill failed to pass and
Hamburg was defeated Nov. 8 by Republican Frank Riggs of Windsor.
State Sen. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, said he plans to sponsor
legislation in Sacramento next year that could fund river restoration
projects.
Gravel company funds earmarked for mining reclamation also could be used
for river repair work, according to Sonoma County officials.
Maurice said she’s been barred from serving on the river task force even
though she was asked to represent a Mendocino County Indian group, the
Aboriginal Native American Education Center. But Gaffney said the Mendocino
group already has a representative on the Mendocino County river panel and
there is another Indian representative in Sonoma County.
The river task force is scheduled to take up the membership question at a
future meeting.
