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Rolling in Restoration Dough

Bay Area environmentalists, disappointed by the Category III grants announced by CALFED in December and early January, were somewhat mollified by the late January approval of an additional $2.6 million for five North Bay restoration projects. The previous grants had allocated nearly $80 million to more than 70 restoration projects, with less than $1.1 million going to projects in the North Bay and Suisun Bay.

"We never expected to get a lot of money for the North Bay in the earlier rounds, but we didn't anticipate that so much would go to the Central Valley," says the S.F. Bay Joint Venture's Nancy Schaefer, citing the North Bay's ecological importance. The Tuolumne River Trust's Tim Ramirez, who served on the panel that recommended projects for funding, says projects were selected on the basis of carefully developed technical criteria that took into account benefits to priority species, habitat types and ecosystem stressors. "Although we thought the North Bay projects had merit, we couldn't just discard the criteria and fund projects on the basis of geography," he says.

The bulk of the 1997 grants went to projects that benefit endangered species immediately, such as fish screens-an approach Schaefer acknowledges is "hard to fault." Other projects include watershed planning and restoration on the Upper Sacramento River, Big Chico Creek, Deer Creek, Auburn Ravine and Coon Creek; land acquisitions, including Liberty Island in the Delta; channel and floodplain restoration on the Cosumnes, Tuolumne and Stanislaus Rivers; and the S.F. Estuary Project's Delta In-Channel Island demonstration project, among others. In Suisun Marsh, the East Bay Regional Park District received $485,000 for shoreline restoration, while in the North Bay Ducks Unlimited got $368,500 for wetland restoration at Cullinan Ranch and the U.C. Sea Grant Extension Program received $222,830 to prevent exotic species introduction. Newly funded North Bay projects include the Regional Wetlands Goals Project, wetlands restoration at Hamilton Air Force Base, Napa River watershed stewardship, Sonoma Creek Watershed restoration and Napa River wetland acquisitions.

According to CALFED's Wendy Wyels, the agency plans to issue another call for proposals in March.

Contact: CALFED (916) 657-2666 or Nancy Schaefer (510) 286-6767

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