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At the ballot box and in the Legislature, Californians have enacted laws to preserve coastal resources, and also safeguard access to the spectacular shoreline. The Coastal Conservancy, a small but enterprising state agency with a staff of 50, deftly fulfills both mandates: protecting sensitive areas such as wetlands, dunes, and coastal dependent economic development, and improving public access by providing trails and park facilities.
The Conservancy does not regulate development like its sister, the California Coastal Commission, but it can step in and help resolve disputes when coastal plans conflict with a landowner's goals.
When the Conservancy was created by the Legislature in 1976, it was unique in the nation, vested with broad, flexible powers to deal with cities, counties, nonprofits, federal agencies, and the private sector to secure coastal protection. Its seven-member board includes four appointees of Governor Pete Wilson, among them Secretary for Resources Douglas P. Wheeler and Board Chair Penny Allen.
Funded by voter-passed bond issues and grants from other sources, including the state's Environmental License Plate Fund, the Conservancy can buy or hold interests in land, initiate projects, or bring other participants together. Its wide-ranging funding capabilities and entrepreneurial deal-closing approach can derive economic as well as environmental benefits from many projects.
"We employ a wide variety of techniques to finance and acquire properties, and we can turn on a dime to strike a deal," Executive Officer Michael Fischer said. Fischer headed the Coastal Commission from 1978-1985 and served as national executive director of the Sierra Club from 1987-1993.
The Coastal Conservancy's mission is five-fold:
The Conservancy's projects are as varied as the geography of the coastal zone region that it protects - the shoreline from Oregon to Mexico, including San Francisco Bay, and the headwaters of coastal rivers as far as 100 miles inland. Its achievements have resulted in creation of similar state conservancies to protect Lake Tahoe and the Santa Monica Mountains.
"They are tops - innovative problem solvers of the highest integrity," said Martin Rosen, president of the Trust for Public Lands, which has worked with the Conservancy on numerous projects. "They don't just talk; they do wonderful things, and they're good listeners. They represent the best - enlightened citizens in a government enterprise," Rosen said.
Sonoma Baylands, situated south of Highway 37 at the mouth of the Petaluma River, will use mud dredged from the Port of Oakland to convert the hayfield to a 322 acre salt marsh for numerous birds and wildlife, including the endangered California clapper rail and salt marsh harvest mouse.
The transformation from a hayfield to wetlands inundated by tidal ebb and flow will unfold this summer. After mud is discharged from a pipeline to fill subsided areas, nature will reestablish the historic function of the land before it was diked for farming in the 1890s.
Obtaining the mud literally required an Act of Congress. When Sonoma Baylands was conceived in 1988, it seemed like a perfect match: Oakland needed to dredge its port to be competitive for shipping, and the Conservancy had to ensure that the mud was clean, and muster up $3 million to transport it from Oakland.
With the help of Rep. Ronald Dellums, the dredging proposal was declared a pilot project that would demonstrate how the U.S.. Amy Corps of Engineers can reuse dredged material to environmental advantage.
Designation as a pilot project enabled the Corps to pay 75 percent of the mud delivery costs, with the Conservancy picking up the rest.
"We had to cause a mid-shift that would accept the idea of using dredged mud as a resources for environmental enhancement instead of dumping it as waste," Fischer said.
The top layer of mud, which contained toxic elements from storm drains and shipbuilding, was removed and disposed of on Port of Oakland property, leaving only uncontaminated soil deposited before Europeans settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. All the mud to be dredged was tested and approved by the Environmental Protection Agency before being transported by barge to Sonoma Baylands where it will be deposited via pipeline onto the land that has subsided.
Under the direction of Project Manager Laurel Marcus, Sonoma Baylands won the support of environmentalists, dredging coalitions, and the commercial fishing industry.
"We may be constructing a marsh that's cleaner than a lot of other bay marshes, which are contaminated by other industrial activities," Barry Nelson, executive director of the Save San Francisco Bay Association, told an interviewer for California Coast &; Ocean Magazine.
Expanded image & captionOne of the Conservancy's most ambitious undertakings is completion of the 400-mile San Francisco Bay Trail, which is 43 percent complete and eventually will encircle the bay. so far, the conservancy has funded 32 miles of pathways for jogging, walking, and bicycling, as well as landscaping, and public facilities as bayside regional parks.
"We try to build coastal trails in an environmentally sensitive manner and avoid natural habitat that could be degraded by public use," said Joan Cardellino, the Conservancy's coastal access program manager.
preservation but only if landowners agree.
"We always deal with willing sellers," Fischer said. "If the seller isn't willing, we walk away."
In its largest acquisition, the Conservancy invested 1.1 million to help the Trust for Public Lands purchase the rugged, forested 7,200-acre Sinkyone wilderness in northern Mendocino County from Georgia-Pacific Corp. for $5 million. The Trust sold 3,300 acres to the state to enlarge adjoining
Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, and retained 3,900 acres, which the Intertribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, a Native American nonprofit group, hopes to buy for cultural heritage, natural resource restoration, and economic values. Completion of the sale would protect the forest from intense harvest, preserve the land for public coastal access and cultural values, and return to the Conservancy its $1.1 million investment.
To achieve successful ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation, the Conservancy enlists local cooperation.
"Our strategy in watershed restoration is to bring together all the stakeholders, identify the problems, explain the science, and do the planning, biology, geology, hydrology, and economics," Fischer said.
"We have had vineyard operators, commercial fishers, grazers, and gravel miners listen to the facts and say, 'I didn't know our operations were having those impacts on yours. With this insight, people can accomplish ecosystem-oriented coastal land management that benefits California's natural heritage, economic needs, and its biodiversity."
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