State Water project impact on Windsurfing at Sherman Island

[Arrgh]

Howzit, FYI there is one site at the intersection of W Sherman Island Rd and Highway 160, just east of Delta Windsurf Co. and another about half a mile west of DWC at the Hook (hard left turn.)

[waitinSD]

Isn’t there something called RVWA that many of us have been paying membership dues to for years. Where are they, the board members, on this? There is no mention on their website and their Facebook page is oddly a closed group. How strange is that? If they are actively pursuing options it would be helpful to let the Delta windsurfing community know.
Fortunately there are concerned and very competent people in the Bay area who actually get things done…thanks Mac from SFBA for showing an interest. How did Wed’s meeting go?

[Howzit]

Dennis_c - thanks - I used the video on the http://www.capradio.org/6847 site that seemed to have the bridge in it. The DWC site is worse than the bridge site - it goes into the Delta by about 80-100 feet and probably needs to have about a 4 lane levy road to accommodate it.

SwellRipper - yeah with this $ize of the project and length of time to get this IS done - the cake is in the oven and the 2 minutes timer/warning is going off before its baked.

Urgent action is required before that June10 deadline. Numbers count so challenge/bug all your buddies to respond and snail mail may be better. Also support SFBA and RWWA.

FYI - about the map - it shows the 2 site co-ordinates then the green in the bottom left corner is the SI County Park and right next to it The Access and another launch Senorita beach then Little Baja (stick figure) - so 3 launches directly impacted.
Check out launch details here - http://rvwa-siko.com/sites/

[Riptide]

Here is the SFBA letter.

June 6, 2014

Ms. Kathleen Buchnoff, Senior Engineer
California Department of Water Resources
1416 Ninth Street
Sacramento, CA 95814

Subject: Initial Study/Proposed Mitigated Negative Declaration for the Sherman Island “Little Baja and Manzo Ranch” Fish Release Sites Project


Dear Ms. Buchnoff:

This letter provides comments with respect to the content, impact analysis methodology and conclusions, significance thresholds and proposed negative declaration of the Initial Study/Proposed Mitigated Negative Declaration for the Sherman Island “Little Baja and Manzo Ranch” Fish Release Sites Project (Initial Study).

The San Francisco Boardsailing Association (SFBA) is a California not-for-profit organization founded in 1986 to protect and enhance boardsailing access, and to promote boardsailing safety and related education in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. To this end, SFBA actively participates in the planning processes for special events, development, reuse and redevelopment of public and private properties adjacent to San Francisco Bay and Delta which may enhance, threaten and/or directly or indirectly impact the recreational uses of Windsurfing and/or Kiteboarding.

Upon review of the Initial Study, it is clear to SFBA and its constituency that the World-Class Recreational Uses of windsurfing and kiteboarding adjacent to and within your proposed project area would be potentially restricted and/or significantly impacted by your proposed project. Section 3.15.1 of the Initial Study (Environmental Setting: pg 3-77) acknowledges that public access and recreation on the navigable waters are protected under the Public Trust, and that windsurfing and kiteboarding do occur there. It also acknowledges that the project “…. will only temporarily (during construction) result in restricted access within the project site for recreation.” Because our members use the levee and road within the proposed project area for parking and for access to and from the water, we find it very difficult to conclude that there is “No Impact” when indeed, two years of prohibited recreational use is a significant impact and it will indeed overwhelm the modest county park immediately adjacent to the project.

The initial study is clearly inadequate in that it functionally ignores a recreational use that has been occurring at the site for over 30 years. By not including the existing use at the site, the document failed to analyze the impacts of the project, and determine whether or not mitigation measures or alternatives would reduce those impacts to a level of insignificance. Since the project would close parts of the levee road that are used for parking and launching permanently, and since the construction staging areas identified in Figure 2 would displace additional parking areas, it is clear that the project would directly interfere with parking and access to the water.

These areas are heavily used during the summer, and the loss of those areas would decrease the capacity of this site, one of the most important in the San Francisco Bay area. This clearly constitutes substantial adverse impacts on human beings, making it impossible to issue a negative declaration unless those impacts are mitigated to a point of insignificance. We have discussed the matter with you and with Ms. Delia Girjal, the person coordinating real estate acquisition for the project, and we believe that it is possible that mitigation measures can be developed that would allow the project to go forward without preparing an EIR. However, in failing to identify the existing use, the current initial study is fatally flawed.

RECREATION AND CEQA

For a number of years, an appendix in the CEQA guidelines indicated that adverse impacts to recreation were presumed to constitute significant impacts. We understand that the guidelines have been changed, and that the IS uses the current checklist. However, changing the guidelines does not mean that recreational impacts can be ignored, it simply means that adverse impacts on recreation are no longer presumed to be significant. Nor does the revision of the CEQA checklist allow such a perfunctory analysis as contained in the current document. Local sailors noticed consultants for DWR performing preliminary soil work for the project last summer—when windsurfers and kiteboarders were present at the site and in the river adjacent to the site. To ignore those impacts in preparing an initial study—while devoting dozens of pages to biological impacts—has left the DWR with a fatally flawed document, and an erroneous conclusion on recreational impacts.

Proper CEQA analysis consists of establishing a baseline of existing resources that might be affected by any project. In this case, the baseline should have identified all of the areas used for parking by those seeking access, as well as all of the launch sites. An inventory of those parking areas, and the number of spaces within them, would have allowed numerical analysis of the project’s impacts on those resources. Similar analysis should have established the pattern of launching from the sites along the levee that could be affected by the project. Currently, the area identified on Figure 2 as ‘Primary Staging & Spoil Site “B”’, and the levee road are used for parking. A full list of the recreational access sites can readily be found here: http://rvwa-siko.com/sites/









THRESHOLDS OF SIGNIFICANCE

It is incumbent on lead agencies to determine what public policies set guidelines for protection of resources, and to use those policies in establishing thresholds of significance that allow the impacts of a project to be weighed against those policies to determine whether or not they are “substantial.”

In California, the legislature, in passing AB 1296, the San Francisco Bay Area Water Trail Act, recognized the extraordinary value of recreational access to San Francisco Bay. Under that Act, Public Resources Code Section 66690 (b) provides:

(b) Water-oriented recreational uses of the San Francisco Bay,
including kayaking, canoeing, sailboarding, sculling, rowing, car-top
sailing, and the like, are of great benefit to the public welfare of the San
Francisco Bay Area. With loss of public open space, the public
increasingly looks to the bay, the region’s largest open space, for
recreational opportunities. Water-oriented recreational uses are an integral
element of the recreational opportunities that span the San Francisco Bay
Area and add to the community vitality and quality of life that the citizens
of the region enjoy

Senator Torlakson followed this effort up with a bill in 2006, SB 1556, which directed the Delta Protection Commission to expand this concept to the Delta. The Vision for this effort can be found on their website, and includes clear support for access to the water:

The Delta Trail will be a interconnected regional network of land and water trails…The network will support recreation…
http://www.delta.ca.gov/res/docs/trail/Adopted_Western_Blueprint_9-23-2010.pdf


Both of these measures implement the larger policies established in the State Constitution which give access to the waters of the state Constitutional standing.

No … corporation … possessing the frontage …. of a… bay… in this State, shall be permitted to exclude the right of way to such water whenever it is required for any public purpose, nor to destroy or obstruct the free navigation of such water (emphasis added)

While it may be argued that the waters offshore of Sherman Island are not a bay, there is no question that the state has established policies that protect and encourage access to those waters. To overlook the use, in light of these policies, is folly.

The existing parking areas, where construction staging is proposed, and where closure and fencing of the levee road are proposed, are needed to accommodate existing use. Parking within the Regional Park is often completely occupied, leaving these areas as the only possible parking areas for sailors, who come from throughout the Bay area and parts of the Central Valley, to park. As such, elimination of these parking areas will directly and substantially reduce the carrying capacity of this area, and will increase burdens on the County park. The IS blithely states, “Improvements to the county road will require a county approved detour but will not result in loss of access.” However, the conclusion in the IS that the project would have no impact on existing regional parks or other recreational facilities is factually wrong.

SAFETY

Permanent closure and fencing of the section of the levee road now used for parking and access to the water is proposed. This will not only eliminate parking that is needed to support existing recreation, it will decrease safety for users. Currently, the levee road in question is a “fail-safe” point of egress for sailors who may be caught in a flood tide, or be subject to a dramatic change in wind velocity. It allows them to swim to shore with their equipment and walk back to their parking area or the County park. This form of egress is critical to recreational safety—and not discussed in the document.

MITIGATION MEETING

We would like to meet directly with you and your staff to address appropriate mitigation measures which can be developed that would allow the project to go ahead without preparation of an EIR or relocation of the fish facilities. That meeting should be held jointly with our sister organizations, the Rio Vista Windsurfing Association and Sherman Island Kiteboarding Organization. Mitigation should include full replacement, in kind, of all parking and launch areas.

SFBA looks forward to your response, and we stand-by to meet with you as soon as practicable.


Sincerely,



Jim McGrath, Vice President
San Francisco Boardsailing Association
macmcgrath@comcast.net
(510) 848-8071

Cc: President@sfba.org
Directors@sfba.org

[drshred]

Tired of bunny-hugging neo-liberals getting their undies in bundle over realistic approaches that might hurt their pet charismatic mega fauna. Do they get angry over eco disasters like invasive species? Not if they're not cute. And there's no shortage of seals. But, man are they cute!

[MalibuGuru]

Drshred, one can only imagine how easy it would be to mitigate this problem with a little common sense.

ps, don't get me wrong. The work of Mac and others is amazing and thoughtful. It is good to have people willing to dig into the minutia. I just wish it weren't necessary.

[aguasonic]

Those darn seals. Eating all of OUR fish. Don't they know this river belongs to Los Angeles?

[tony]

[aguasonic]

Smelt wouldn't need saving if the Sacramento wasn't being pumped to Los Angeles. The San Joaquin is sucked _dry_. The 'river' on the west end is just backwash from San Pablo Bay.

What are they going to do with the smelt when the tunnels open, /and the entire contents of the Sacramento River/ can be drained ? The Tunnel People say this would only ever happen "in an emergency".

You mean, like during a drought?

This has nothing to with seals. The smelt would not need to be transported downstream if _their_ river wasn't being sucked dry.

Welcome to the water wars.

Mark
~~~~

[Riptide]

Here is the link to the RVWA_SIKO Letter. The file is to large to post here.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/229369607/RVWA-SIKO-Comments-for-Little-Baja-Fish-Release-Initial-Study-Final1