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Report Card - Estuary Gets a "C"
A recent accounting by the San Francisco Estuary Project of efforts to address its ten top priorities for environmental action suggests moderate but not earth-shaking progress. The accounting, released in March 1999 in a Bay-Delta Environmental Report Card (see Now in Print), documents who has done what to save wetlands, reduce urban runoff, control exotic species, coordinate science and management, expand ecological monitoring, and educate the public about the Estuary since 1996. The accounting builds on a prior review covering the 1993-1996 period. The following is an excerpt from the report's executive summary describing progress on most of the ten priorities (see summary chart back page for information on all ten).
WETLANDS
With only 3-4% of the Bay-Delta's historic wetlands still intact, it's no wonder that local interests have identified protecting and restoring wetlands as a top priority. Major leaps ahead on the wetlands front since 1996 include much more detailed scientific research documenting the historic and current extent of Bay wetlands, better (but still inadequate) accounting of wetland losses, better monitoring of the success of restoration efforts, and new science-based goals for where and what kind of wetlands we need to create in the next 100 years to have a healthy Bay. These efforts, combined with some government-driven planning efforts in the North Bay and CALFED's efforts upstream, provide the essential building blocks for creation of regional wetlands management plans. But such efforts have also raised the ire of private landowners, shoreline businesses and duck club owners whose lands may be targets for restoration.
In terms of the numbers, fewer wetlands and riparian zones have been protected through acquisition since 1996 than in the prior three year period, falling from 18,677 acres in 1996 to 10,983 in March 1999. During the earlier period the vast majority of reported acquisitions were baylands (namely the unusually big purchase of almost 10,000 acres of North Bay salt ponds) , whereas the more recent review included much larger acreages of riparian zones and floodplain (6,106 acres in the San Joaquin River Wildlife Refuge alone). Acreage protected by perpetual conservation easements over private lands in the Central Valley and Suisun Marsh grew from 67,292 to 75,000 acres between 1996 and 1999.
On the restoration front, the number of acres actually restored or enhanced grew from at least 8,137 acres in 1993-1996 to at least 13,656 acres of wetlands in 1996-1999. The number of restoration projects in the planning stages, many with no guarantee of construction funding, also swelled, from at least 12,693 acres as of 1996 to 19,109 acres in March 1999. Where most projects might have been undertaken as mitigation for development of wetlands in the past, the vast majority of current projects are aimed at the health of the ecosystem. The acreage of wetlands restored far outpaced that lost, if inventories of permitted development projects are to be believed. Finally, programs providing incentives to individual landowners to flood their land for seasonal waterfowl and wetlands continued to grow-enhancing or restoring over 90,000 acres as of 1999-but did not keep up with demand (the owners of at least 47,000 acres still want to sign up).
INTEGRATION & REGIONAL MONITORING
Those outside of government have long clamored for the bureaucratic behemoth to become more efficient, and for it to catch up faster with the latest science and politics. These priorities call for better integration of the myriad regulatory, planning, management and scientific research programs being undertaken on behalf of the Bay-Delta Estuary, and its users, and for expansion of existing scientific monitoring programs. But progress remains slow and elusive on this front.
Since 1996, the S.F. Estuary Institute's Regional Monitoring Program (RMP) has certainly improved and broadened its $2.9 million per year, discharger-funded testing of Bay waters and sediments for contaminants and water quality violations. The S.F. Bay Regional Water Board, in turn, has used the data generated as a consistent reference point for its regulatory actions and policies. The Institute, meanwhile, has expanded scientific research into other areas identified as critical by the priorities, among them wetlands, watersheds and exotic species. There has been little examination of how land use affects pollution, water management and restoration efforts, however.
Better integration may result from the fact that research efforts throughout the Bay-Delta now include much more work on ecosystem processes and linkages, with the Institute, U.S. Geological Survey and Interagency Ecological Program all undertaking studies targeted at filling data gaps so that water and restoration managers can make more informed decisions.
Lastly, an increasing emphasis on "watershed" management-in which sources of pollution, land use and restoration efforts are looked at on a watershed scale-has great potential to break governments and local interests out of their boxes. Likewise, recognition of the need to address cross-media pollutants like diazinon and dioxin-which are traveling through air, water and land-is forcing air and water agencies to talk turkey. All these efforts are still only in the fledgling stages, however. As a whole, progress on integration and monitoring expansion has fallen far short of what's necessary.
ECONOMIC INCENTIVES
Whatever the regional, state and federal initiatives to save wetlands, creeks and watersheds, nothing will really happen until local governments make protecting these resources part of the fabric of their land use decision-making. A fair amount of progress was made in providing economic incentives to local government with passage of state Proposition 204 in November 1996, which provided $15 million for counties and local agencies to undertake restoration projects in the Sacramento, San Joaquin and Trinity River watersheds ($10 million has since been awarded). Apart from this single source of new incentives upstream, the Clean Water Act's 319(h) program continued to provide funding for watershed management and nonpoint source pollution control-providing dollars to 10 local agencies in 1997-1998. But as a whole, not nearly enough is being done to encourage local government action on a substantial scale, and new development-which often impacts wetlands, creeks and watersheds-continues to be the best source of revenue to local governments, an inherent conflict.
URBAN RUNOFF
Recent years have produced a proliferation of city, county and community programs aimed at controlling the urban runoff that is the central thrust of this report card priority. Most of these programs rely heavily on public education activities ranging from storm drain stenciling programs to COKE cans carrying pollution prevention messages to a pilot Integrated Pest Management project focusing on stores selling garden pesticides. A particular new target of latter days is erosion from development construction sites-with the association of Bay Area stormwater agencies and the S.F. Regional Board doing an effective song and dance of education and enforcement. Meanwhile, the S.F. & Central Valley Regional Boards recently began developing new measuring sticks and regulatory hammers aimed at curbing mercury, pesticides, and several other pollutants in the Bay-Delta watershed. These take the form of setting total maximum daily allowable loads (TMDLs) for each pollutant in each water body, but work on this front is still very much in the R&D phase.
One massive source of pollution flows to the Bay-transportation systems-remains largely unaddressed, however. Likewise, enforcement of existing laws regulating discharges of contaminated stormwater continues to lag.
WATERSHED MANAGEMENT
No matter how many pollution problems get fixed, creeks get cleaned and wetlands get restored down on the waterfront, what happens upstream can easily ruin progress. State and federal policies and programs increasingly emphasize coordinated watershed-based approaches to water quality issues. Since 1996 watershed management plans and programs have been developed throughout the Estuary region, including major initiatives on the Sacramento and Napa Rivers, and in the Santa Clara basin, and smaller programs focusing on Bay Area and Central Valley creeks. However, all are essentially volunteer and stakeholder based, and most are hampered by the enormous research and consensus-building requirements necessary to address large land areas and diverse land uses and human activities. Full implementation of this worthy priority will require much more political will and funding.
EXOTIC SPECIES
Three years ago scientists announced that San Francisco Bay was the most invaded estuary in the world, and since then a lot of local momentum has built up for stronger state and federal regulation on the issue. Most of the invading clams, worms, crabs, fish, plants and other organisms arrive from foreign ports via ships' ballast water, and once discharged into our waters there's very little anyone can do to control their spread, short of poisoning the entire system. So considerable effort, largely on the part of Baykeeper and the Marine Conservation Center, has gone into focusing attention on the ballast water issue. As a result, the Port of Oakland plans to adopt mandatory ballast water exchange requirements for ships docking at its berths early next century, the S.F. Regional Board has listed exotic species as a pollutant threatening beneficial use of the state's waters under the Clean Water Act, and the U.S. EPA has received a petition backed up by a letter from 17 legislators urging them to roll back Clean Water Act exemptions for discharges "normal to the operation" of vessels. The Coast Guard, meanwhile, will soon release voluntary national guidelines for ballast water management, a possible prelude to mandatory regs. Fish and wildlife managers, meanwhile, have continued to battle problem exotics already in the Estuary since 1996 and many organizations have begun public education campaigns.
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