Posted on Tue, Feb. 01, 2005
FISH FIND NEW FRIEND:
NASA
POLLUTED POND AT MOFFETT FIELD TO BECOME NATIVE SPECIES' CLEAN
HABITAT
By Jessica Portner
Mercury News
After decades of
resisting environmentalists' pleas, NASA and the United States Navy are budging
on a major step toward restoring the tidal marshes that are now home to Moffett
Federal Airfield: Adding fish into the long-contaminated storm water retention
pond.
The 210-acre pond, which sits along the north end of the base, has
long been too polluted with lead and pesticides to support wildlife. The Navy
would be responsible for the cleanup, which could begin next year and cost
between $2 million and $12 million.
``Our mission is to be good stewards
of the environment,'' said Sandy Olliges, chief of the Moffett Field
environmental division for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
which owns the land. ``This will bring this area back to its natural state.''
This is but one step in a wide array of larger cleanups at Moffett,
including eliminating contamination at Hangar One and removing toxic solvents
from the groundwater in pockets of the base.
The Navy is weighing
different options for cleaning up the pollution, reintroducing fish including
the tiny stickleback and goby, and restoring the marshes and ponds to their
19th-century splendor. To make the pond livable for saltwater fish, it would
create a series of dikes, to allow water from San Francisco Bay to mingle with
storm water. In environmentalists' vision, the fish would be joined by an array
of other animals, including the California clapper rail and the salt marsh
harvest mouse.
``A lot of people around here have the vision that we
have a habitat that predated federal owners,'' said Lenny Siegel, director of
the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View, one of dozens of
groups, including Save the Bay and the Coastal Conservancy, that have been
pushing for the change. ``This community was successful in getting federal
agencies to listen to them,'' he said.
Centuries ago, the area,
sandwiched by Stevens Creek, the South Bay salt ponds and Moffett Field, was an
expanse of tidal marshes and home to migratory shorebirds and waterfowl. But by
the late 1980s, groundwater tests showed unsafe levels of toxic chemicals such
as PCBs, pesticides and heavy metals, and the area had been branded a target
cleanup site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
These
contaminants, the Navy and environmentalists say, had likely drained from
electrical motors and transformers and early paints into the marshes during
rainstorms in the 1940s and '50s, when the bases were teeming with military
flights.
The Navy, which has responsibility under federal law for the
cleanup, hadn't declared the pond restoration a priority because of the high
cost, said Rick Weissenborn, the Navy's lead remedial project manager for
Moffett Field.
The pond wasn't an immediate risk to people, so
underground fuel spills on other parts of the base took priority. The toxic
chemicals in the pond also weren't as much of a threat because they didn't seep
into the wider bay, environmentalists say.
``There was an unfamiliarity
with restoration,'' said Weissenborn, who said the cleanup could begin as early
as next year. ``And it scared them debating how much it cost.''
Craig
Breon, the executive director of the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society, said
the government agencies that own and operate the land were also reluctant to
invest in adding wildlife because they were reluctant to lose control of land
they could use for other purposes such as housing developments.
As
adorable as the feathered and scaly creatures might be, Breon said, ``Few land
owners want to invite endangered species on to their land.''
But he
gives the Navy good marks for coming around. ``They have seen the writing on the
wall, so they might as well say yes and seem like good guys, and I praise them
for that.''
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