Posted on April 22, 2019
After years of neglect and the second-wettest winter on record, the San Rafael Canal is in more urgent need of dredging than ever, Marin lawmakers, city officials and local activists say.
The torrential rain that beat on Marin over the stormy season has flushed high volumes of sediment down hillsides into the creek, shoaling the channel so that water levels are dangerously low, said Bill Guerin, San Rafael’s director of public works.
Year after year, Marin County supervisors Dennis Rodoni and Damon Connolly, and Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, have joined city officials and local leaders, hoping to make enough noise so that the Canal gets the attention it deserves, Guerin said.
“The main point we want to get across is the need for the channel to be dredged,” Guerin said. “It’s been years.”
In fact, it’s been since 2011 that the channel was partially dredged and since 2002 that it was fully dredged. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is supposed to perform routine dredging to maintain proper channel depth every six to eight years under the River and Harbors Act. But the project has been left out of the Corps’ annual work plan because of a lack of funding.
Officials in the Corps’ San Francisco region previously said that a request to dredge only the San Rafael Canal was not a high priority — compared with other large commercial shipping channels such as the Port of Oakland.
The project would require about $1 million to fund engineering and planning. Dredging would cost about $12 million, city staffers said.
Jay Kinberger, the chief of the Corps’ Navigation and Coastal Infrastructure Branch, said there is no funding available for the project in this year’s budget, and a funding request was not included for next year’s budget.
However, he said the fiscal year 2020-21 budget is being developed now, “and this project will receive consideration, along with many other worthwhile studies and projects across the country in competition for limited federal resources.”
The Corps will submit its request in February 2020.
“Of course, no commitments can be made at this time,” Kinberger said.
Meanwhile, “the canal continues to fill up with mud with all the storms,” Guerin said. “It’s getting shallower and shallower.”
Nadine Urciuoli, CEO of the recently formed San Rafael Channel Association and general manager of Helmut’s Marine Service Inc., cited recent depth readings as low as 2 feet in some areas.
The federally authorized depth for the inner channel is 6 feet and 8 feet at the outer channel. It’s more common to see depth readings at 2-1/2 feet and 4-1/8 feet, respectively, Urciuoli said.
“It’s definitely not deep enough,” she said.
Urciuoli said the 2017 and 2019 winter storms garnered presidential disaster declarations, with severe flooding and mudslide areas wreaking havoc on roads and private property. The impact is most evident at low tide when the channel is virtually non-navigable for boats getting in and out.
“Boats get stuck in the mud almost daily,” she said, noting that sometimes boaters wait it out until high tide sets them free.
Huffman drew congressional attention earlier this month for the long-overdue need for dredging at a Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund hearing in Washington, D.C., saying that the canal and the Petaluma River fit into a category of ports that the Army Corps “has simply forgotten about or left behind.”
“This system is not working and is, in fact, insulting to communities that play by the rules and still lose, every year, every single time,” Huffman said.
What’s at stake if the channel remains neglected is flood control, public safety and the local economy, said Talia Smith, a senior management analyst with the San Rafael public works department.
There are about 12,000 residents within a half mile of the channel and approximately 2,000 boats moor in its water, including 135 live-aboards. Seven flood control pumps feed into the creek channel, she said.
Police and fire have used rescue boats in 1,380 water incidents in the past 15 years. The 134 businesses within 400 feet of the creek grossed $191 million in sales tax in 2017, she said.
“It’s not only the business but police and fire that rely on getting in and out,” she said.
San Rafael fire Chief Chris Gray said that given the shallow waters emergency crews are having to adapt by adding the deployment of an inflatable watercraft at times.
“Given limitations of a shallow navigable area and tidal influence, it’s always touch and go to best ensure a rapid emergency response in the canal where thousands of lives and property are at stake,” he said. “Emergencies do not follow a time schedule or tidal chart.”
If left alone, the situation in the canal won’t get any better, said Mayor Gary Phillips.
“The small waterways are getting neglected in my view and we’re frustrated by that,” he said. “We have little control over the arm wrestling going on for funding in Washington, and it’s frustrating that there is not a more categorical way to get in the queue for those dollars.”
“It’s in the best interest of everyone to get this channel dredged,” he said.
Source: marinij.com
