By Lesli A. Maxwell -- Bee Staff
Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, June 26, 2005
On the green waters of Georgiana Slough, Jeff Hart steers the Tule Queen
along lush banks where thick tufts of tule sway in the breeze, and sandbar
willow, alder and cottonwood trees cast shadows across the boat.
Barn
swallows careen and dive around the Tule Queen - a covered, triple-pontoon boat
- as it wends south through what some say is the most pristine tendril in the
northern reaches of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
This, Hart said,
pointing to an embankment where sycamore trees tower over a bramble of wild
blackberries, is how the Delta likely looked before the Gold Rush.
"Old-timers describe tree canopies so thick that it
was like a cathedral out here," Hart said of Georgiana Slough, a meandering
12-mile waterway that links the Sacramento River south of Walnut Grove with the
north fork of the Mokelumne River.
Hart's job is raising and planting
native reeds, grasses, shrubs and trees to restore habitat along banks and
strengthen levees. It's a tiny part of a sprawling federal and state effort to
protect and improve the health of the Delta, a tangle of river channels and
sloughs that mix with the saltwater of San Francisco Bay to form the heart of
California's complex water system.
That effort, called CalFed, has spent
$3 billion since 2000 to shore up hundreds of miles of aging levees that
surround reclaimed farmland, improve water quality for farms and homes
downstream and increase water deliveries to users without causing more damage to
the already fragile estuary.
But five years into what's supposed to be a
30-year process of coordinating state and federal efforts to improve the Delta
and keep peace among its constituents - wildlife, anglers, farmers, city water
managers and recreational boaters -CalFed is struggling.
This summer,
scientists are scrambling to explain a dramatic drop in native fish populations,
particularly Delta smelt. At the same time CalFed will undergo an independent
audit, ordered by the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to examine
how the program has spent the $3 billion in taxpayer funds.
The
program's financial future is also shaky.
State lawmakers voted to slash
CalFed's budget earlier this year, largely in response to the program's failure
to secure steady funding beyond voter-approved bond funds, which will evaporate
soon. Schwarzenegger restored much of the funding in his May budget revise and,
since then, CalFed has been lobbying lawmakers to follow suit.
Meanwhile, CalFed officials agreed to propose a new plan for paying for
projects and reorganize the way they award money for scientific research.
"CalFed became all things to all people," said Keith Coolidge, a
spokesman for the California Bay-Delta Authority, the agency created two years
ago to oversee CalFed projects. "Much of this conflict is an outgrowth of
frustration to get programs and projects out the door, but this is a 30-year
program and we are only halfway through the fifth year of implementation."
On a boat tour for journalists last week, state water officials and the
nonpartisan Water Education Foundation sought to showcase Delta projects, like
Hart's restoration work, that have been successful. They also used the tour to
highlight pressing problems - levee erosion and the invasion of non-native
plants and fish - they said would worsen if CalFed's efforts were abandoned.
Hart's Georgiana Slough tour did both.
For two miles on the
slough's north end, a no-wake zone keeps boaters from driving at high speed.
That rule, Hart said, keeps riparian habitat intact and protects levees that
guard farmland on the other side from erosion.
Further down, the no-wake
zone ends and large power boats are free to move swiftly through the water,
creating waves that beat against the banks and levees.
Hart has built "brush boxes" inside sections of eroded bank - called scallops - where he
planted tules, rushes and other native plant species. Besides his brush boxes
where stout stands of tule have taken root, sections of riprap, or large rocks,
line the inside of the levee to stop degradation.
"The brush boxes
dissipate wave energy up to 60 to 80 percent," Hart said. "If nothing is done
and with all the boat traffic and wave energy out here, the (Army Corps of
Engineers) has no choice but to dump a bunch of rock."
Hart believes if
the no-wake zone were extended throughout the slough, the southern end could be
restored to the lushness of the northern end.
A lobbyist for the state's
large organization of boaters said boat owners want to be part of solutions for
protecting the Delta's banks and levees, but suggested that boat speed isn't
entirely to blame.
"Delta boaters are sensitive to what waterways look
like," said Jerry Desmond, Jr., executive vice president for Recreational
Boaters of California. "They don't love seeing riprap levees everywhere either."
About the writer: The Bee's Lesli A. Maxwell can be reached at (916) 321-1048 or lmaxwell@sacbee.com.
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