Bay Area's marinas are buried in silt
Dredging slowed by costs, tighter rules

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, July 5, 2001

When he bought his waterfront home three years ago, Bill Jones envisioned regular trips in his speedboat from his backyard dock out to the bay.

His dock still sits on the San Rafael Canal, but his dream has turned to mud.

In fact, the canal is so full of silt that the 73-year-old former bathhouse owner cannot use his boat.

It is a dilemma that many residents living in harbor communities throughout the Bay Area are facing. Environmental and regulatory roadblocks, the high cost of dredging and the difficulty finding places to dump the spoils have made it increasingly difficult for cities, counties and yacht clubs to maintain their marinas.

"This is an issue that everybody is facing, but the smaller marinas in areas of high sediment are really feeling the pinch," said Jim Haussener, the executive director of the California Marine Affairs and Navigation Conference, which handles issues relating to federal navigation channels.

"The cost of dredging has gone up proportionately faster than any other cost at a marina," he said.

The San Rafael Canal is a good example of the problems even city-run marinas are facing.

Congress designated the canal, originally a drainage slough, a federal project in 1923, about the same time it was dug out and widened. As part of the agreement, San Rafael was required to get rid of the dredged mud.

That wasn't a problem at first, and the canal was dredged every five or six years by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The regulations for dumping have gotten considerably stricter since then. Rigorous testing of dredged material has been required since 1992, adding both to the cost and to the time it takes to get a permit.

The process has gotten so time consuming, Haussener said, that it isn't unheard of for a marina to get its final permit from the last of a myriad of regulatory agencies just as the first one expires.

But San Rafael's problem wasn't with its permits. Dave Bernardi, the San Rafael public works director, said the city ran out of land where the silt could be deposited and was forced to pay an extra $100,000 to dump the material off Alcatraz.

He said the subsequent discovery that a substantial portion of the dredged material is contaminated with oil and grease from runoff meant that the city had to fork over an additional $400,000 to separate the contaminants and find yet another dump site.

Meanwhile, the Corps of Engineers has yet to budget the $1.8 million needed to scour out the canal, which was last dredged in 1992.

"We have been working since 1997 to seek inclusion of funding in the congressional budget for the next dredging," said Bernardi, who is confident the money will be available next year but is upset it is taking so long.

"It has been an ordeal. It seems to get harder and harder every time we come up for our maintenance dredging," he said.

The canal -- which has 800 boats in its harbor, along with boat repair facilities and refueling stations -- now has only 18 inches of water at low tide.

"I paid a premium price for my house on the canal because I wanted a dock and a boat," said Jones, who organized a group of homeowners called the Bucket of Mud Brigade to lobby for dredging. "My boat is now in storage because I can't have it sitting in the mud."

Privately owned harbors have it even worse. A small harbor at Bahia, in northeastern Novato, has reverted almost completely to marsh, leaving boats trapped in the mud. The 288 homeowners cannot afford the $4 million or so it would cost to dredge the lagoon, which was carved out of the wetlands in 1964.

Even if they had the money, the dredging permit has lapsed since the fast accumulating silt was last removed in 1987. Given environmental concerns, it is unlikely a permit will be issued.

The marinas at Bel Marin Keys in Novato and at Port Sonoma at the mouth of the Petaluma River are also struggling to stay ahead of the accumulating sediments.

"We dredge every year," said Brian Swedberg, the harbormaster at Port Sonoma. "We work full time to keep our marina open."

Port Sonoma has the advantage of owning land where mud can be dumped. Palo Alto, faced with a siltation problem, was forced to close its yacht harbor, and the site is now a wetland.

Alviso, once the busiest port at the south end of San Francisco Bay, turned into a virtual ghost town of vacant warehouses after the once-bustling Steamboat Slough silted up. The San Leandro Marina, Point San Pablo Yacht Harbor and marinas in Vallejo, Benicia and Martinez are all struggling with issues relating to dredging permits and dumping.

It is a man-made problem that started during the Gold Rush. According to experts on the bay ecosystem, between 1850 and 1914, about 2.4 billion cubic yards of sediment from hydraulic mining and hillside stream erosion flowed into the estuarine system encompassing San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento- San Joaquin River Delta. Between 1914 and 1965, an additional 450 million cubic yards of sediment from mining in the Sierra reached the bay. Dams and other projects have, over the years, decreased the flushing action of water flowing into the bay.

Philip Williams, a hydrologist who has consulted on numerous wetlands projects around the bay, said many of the marinas that are now in trouble were built during a time of "engineering arrogance" -- when people felt technology could overcome any obstacle nature put in the way. The prevailing attitude was helped along by the fact that dredging was cheap. Harbors and marinas were carved out without any consideration of the dynamics of bay siltation.

Attitudes began to change in the late 1960s and early '70s. First, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission declared that marsh and wildlife habitat areas were unsuitable for marinas -- and then other agencies began limiting the number of sites in the bay for disposing of dredged material.

But just as the puzzle of where to dump dredged material grew in complexity,

a possible solution materialized. The mud can be used, some conservationists think, to help restore some of the 190,000 acres of tidal marshes that once ringed the bay, by building up areas that sank below the water line after dikes were built.

"If you want to restore marshes, you have to fill at least part of the site with dredged material," Williams said. "Instead of looking at dredged material as a problem to get rid of, (people) are seeing opportunities to use the material to restore wetlands."

That, said Bernardi, may be a good thing in the long run, but right now, it doesn't help residents and businesses on the San Rafael Canal or any of the other small marinas in the Bay Area, where high costs and long delays are hurting commerce.

"The economic vitality of the bay is being affected by the regulatory process," he said. "In terms of the entire bay, it's a big concern when you look at the impacts on the small business owner."

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Mud harbors

Bay Area waterfront communities find it increasingly difficult to afford the costs of removing silt from their harbors and marinas. Yacht harbors in Palo Alto and Alviso have been forced to close and others are facing an uncertain future as the mud builds up.

-- The Palo Alto Yacht Harbor: Reverted to wetlands, off of San Francisquito Creek.

-- Bolinas Lagoon: Has been silting up for years, to the dismay of the wealthy residents of Sea Drift and boaters in Bolinas.

-- Bahia: Boats now sit in the mud because there is no money to dredge the channel.

-- Port Sonoma: This marina has to be dredged every year to keep out the silt.

-- San Leandro Marina: Needs to be dredged every four years.

-- The Alviso Marina: Once the busiest port on the south end of San Francisco Bay, but the slough that feeds the marina silted over, turning the area into a ghost town of vacant warehouses.

E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite@sfchronicle.com