Creeks, rivers, and watersheds

A healthy Bay Area depends on protecting the watersheds that feed into the Bay and form our environmental lifeline

All the earth's land surface is divided into watersheds. (What is a watershed? See article.)

As scientific understanding of watershed function increases, more and more of the Sierra Club's efforts are shaped by watershed thinking. Watershed protection and enhancement are among the Bay Chapter's priority campaigns. The articles in this issue tell of a few watersheds of special importance and of some of the more general efforts that affect many watersheds here in the Bay Area and in California.

Watershed, river, and creek protection are anchors of the Sierra Club legacy, which was forged in the battle to stop the damming of the Tuolumne River in Hetch Hetchy Valley. Today, Hetch Hetchy is still in the news as environmentalists show that it would be practical to undam Hetch Hetchy (see article, page 6).

Evolution in watershed and creek awareness, and the challenges posed by the heavy urbanization of the Bay Area, are bringing more complexity and a wider scope to the Sierra Club's involvement with watersheds - "a fundamental shift towards watershed-based protection and management, where riparian-corridor restoration and grassroots activism are viewed as essential components of effective water-quality improvement," in the words of Ann Riley, long-time Sierra Club member, co-founder of the Urban Creeks Council (a non-profit creeks-restoration group), and now watershed- and river-restoration advisor to the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Many of the Bay Chapter's most important efforts in recent years have focused strongly on watersheds.

In Contra Costa County two massive development projects have been proposed that would destroy fragile wetlands, creeks, and their associated wildlife habitat. The Bay Chapter has supported local opposition to these projects, bringing about a vastly downsized and more environmentally-sensitive project in Orinda's Gateway Valley (see September-October Yodeler, page 15), and growing public opposition to the proposed Palos Colorados project in Moraga (see July-August Yodeler, page 19).

The Sierra Club continues to insist that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission manage its watersheds with more ecological responsibility. Specifically, the Club is opposing a four-fold expansion of the Calaveras Dam on Alameda Creek, which would flood habitat for the endangered red-legged frog and Alameda whipsnake (see article, page 7). At the upper end of San Francisco's water system the Club has joined several other environmental organizations in opposing increased withdrawals of water from the Tuolumne River, which would degrade essential fish-spawning and -rearing habitat on one of the most productive salmonid rivers in northern California (see article, page 7).

"We need to be aware of the impacts that our downstream water demands have on fragile habitats in our watersheds," says Bay Chapter chair John Rizzo. "We should be working to conserve and reduce water demand, rather than expanding supply at the expense of sensitive species and open space."

Creek and watershed issues played a key role in a number of successes for Sierra Club-supported candidates in the November elections, including the election of Councilmembers Lynda Deschambault in Moraga, Robert Lieber and Farid Javandel in Albany, and Charlene Raines in Hercules. The Hercules effort included passage of a ballot measure protecting the entire Franklin Canyon watershed.

For decades the Chapter has worked to protect the East Bay shoreline, with special efforts for the Eastshore State Park which runs across the Oakland, Berkeley, Albany, and El Cerrito shorelines, and more recently in North Richmond. In these areas, restoration of wetlands and creek mouths has become an increasing concern.

Local Sierra Club groups are supporting efforts to restore creeks throughout the Bay Area, including the removal of underground culverts ("daylighting" creeks). For example, the Northern Alameda County Group has been active in promoting feasibility studies on daylighting Strawberry Creek in downtown Berkeley, as a model of an ecologically based redevelopment strategy (see July-August Yodeler, page 21). The Group has also helped move the city to establish a Creeks Task Force to revise the city's Creeks Ordinance (see article, page 11). The West Contra Costa County Group has played a key role in founding Friends of the Rodeo and Refugio Creek Watersheds, a local organization to protect the watersheds of Hercules. Our "Volunteer of the month" article this issue is about Steve Kirby, who has led this effort (see article, page 18).

The Marin Group plays an active role in watershed projects at a number of locations including Drakes Estero (the Johnson's Oyster site), Big Lagoon (Muir Beach), and Bolinas Lagoon (see article, page 12).

We have also included an article about one state-level restoration project, the effort to restore water to the San Joaquin River for the 60 miles of riverbed that are now dry due to water diversions (see page 5).

Chapter activists are working to educate the public about the benefits of watershed and creek protection. The Sierra Club recently co-sponsored a four-day conference, "Conversations About Watersheds", at the East Bay Watershed Center in Oakland. Chapter conservation manager Jonna Papaefthimiou helped bring Club activists into Richmond High School to educate low-income students about the benefits of environmental restoration, including field trips to local creek- and wetland-restoration sites, such as Breuner Marsh and Wildcat Creek. "We need to educate and inspire a whole new generation of environmentalists," says Papaefthimiou. "Low-income communities have been neglected in these efforts, and we need to change that pattern by teaching these kids about nature right where they live, and by restoring places they can actually see and participate in."

Part of this effort must be to educate ourselves, and on page 13 is an article on the place of our own yards and gardens in the watershed.

The tremendous convergence of activity around our watersheds and creeks is a state and national trend. Thirty years ago, individual creek activists fought incremental battles, one creek here and one creek there, but in recent years, collaboration and long-term planning across the full watershed are seen as necessary to improve water quality and reduce non-point-source pollution, enhance flood control, enhance fisheries and wildlife habitat, and simply provide recreational and aesthetic opportunities. Now typical efforts include the development of multi-stakeholder watershed councils and head-to-toe watershed plans and assessments. We have included on page 11a directory of regional and East Bay watershed-related organizations and agencies.

State and local water-quality regulations are moving towards requiring developers to provide creek buffers and restore more natural creekside conditions, as one way of addressing storm-water pollution and flood control. Larry Kolb, assistant executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, (and in 1976 - 1977 Bay Chapter conservation chair), emphasizes the "encouraging trend to see flood control agencies now re-inventing themselves to be watershed stewards". Kolb notes that over the past half century "billions of dollars have been spent on turning our natural water bodies into concrete, thus `hardening' the watersheds. In hindsight, we could have saved most of this money and creek degradation by making our natural systems act as the flood-control structure, which the disastrous consequences of our short-sightedness are now forcing us to do anyway."

An example of these problems is the infiltration of storm water, no longer able to flow in natural channels, into sewage systems. In heavy rains the East Bay Municipal Utility District is reduced to allowing much of this mixed sewage and storm water to flow into the Bay with inadequate treatment, and the Chapter is struggling to persuade the Water Board not to give it a permit to continue doing so (see article, page 8).

Exciting news in the fisheries arena is adding to the general improvement in regulatory efforts. Threatened and endangered species are known to be present in several Bay Area creeks - notably salmon and/or steelhead populations in Lagunitas Creek in Marin County, Alameda Creek in southern Alameda County, and Codornices Creek in Berkeley and Albany. Watershed-based regulations in those areas now include the added clout of sensitive-species protections and habitat-enhancement directives, through such agencies as the National Marine Fisheries Service and the California Department of Fish and Game. Jeff Miller, director of the Alameda Creek Alliance, notes that where once his organization was fighting simply to convince people that fish existed in the creek, "now there are 15 local, state, and federal agencies collaborating on fish-passage projects within the Alameda Creek watershed. That's progress!" NMFS, however, is proposing to cut 80% of salmonid critical habitat (see article, page 4); we must struggle to maintain the progress.

The state has begun to provide funding for innovative, grassroots-based restoration projects. For example, the CalFed Bay-Delta Authority's Watershed Program and the California Department of Water Resources Urban Streams Program are actively funding community-based watershed-restoration partnerships as central features in their policy mandates. John Lowrie, watershed-program manager of the CalFed Watershed Program, emphasizes that, "we are seeing the need for locally based initiatives in maintaining the long-term sustainability of watershed protection. The state simply doesn't have the resources to reach every local community, and we've found that community activists and non-profit organizations - with their dedication and local knowledge - are critical to the long-term success of our overall state watershed-protection goals."

At the federal level, however, watershed protection is under attack. The Bush administration has taken advantage of a limited Supreme Court ruling to make drastic cuts in Clean Water Act protection for wetlands (see article, page 14). It is also proposing to allow sewage treaters to mix incompletely treated sewage with treated wastewater when it rains (see article, page 8).

A large part of Sierra Club history has been focused around our waterways. Thanks to the efforts of our volunteers, collaborations with other environmental organizations, and the growing awareness of the need for community-based watershed protection, the Bay Chapter can feel proud that in this area, it is absolutely making a difference - and will continue to do so into the future.

Juliet Lamont