Canal waterway in bad shape - residents urge dredging of San Rafael site

By John Nickerson Marin IJ June 7, 2001

Bill Jones (left), who owns a home on the Canal, imagined that with the dock behind his home he'd be boating all the time. But the Canal is so silted in he has to keep his boat at a boat storage down the waterway. Jones has decided to do something about it. Jones, with the help of Canal condo owner John Suhrhoff (right), has passed out hundreds of fliers about a meeting scheduled for Saturday at Pickleweed Park to try to find out what can be done about dredging.

When Bill Jones bought his Portofino Road home along the San Rafael Canal in 1998, he thought he'd found the perfect place.

What attracted the semi-retiree to the cul-de-sac home was the dock, where he imagined casting off his daily worries by slipping the boat lines and motoring out to the bay. But over the past few years, he watched his boating opportunities evaporate as mud built up in the canal. Now Jones, 72, says he has had enough.

Because there is so much mud on the end of his dock, Jones has to pay $100 per month to keep his 17-foot runabout down the canal at Hi-Tide Boat Sales and ask someone to put it in the water before he can make a break for the briny.

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," Jones said, borrowing a famous line from the movie "Network."

Even though he admits to being "just nobody," Jones has called a public meeting of like-minded residents and boaters at Pickleweed Community Center at 11 a.m. Saturday to figure out what can be done to get the canal dredged.

"I don't even know what to do when they get there," he said of the meeting, adding that it's heart-wrenching to watch the canal fill up with muck.

Jones is not alone in wanting the canal cleaned out.

Dave Bernardi, San Rafael's public works director, has been to the Washington D.C. offices of California senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and U.S. representative Lynn Woolsey to look for help in getting the $1.8 million into the Army Corps of Engineers budget to get it done.

"We've been working for two years to get this dredging project included in the Corps budget," Bernardi said. "The city has hired two lobbying firms in Washington D.C. that are experts in waterway legislation. But as the Corps budget currently stands, the San Rafael project is not funded."

The canal should be no shallower than six feet at low tide, according to federal guidelines. However, low tide currently leaves just one foot of water - not even enough for the city's police boat to lend assistance in case of an emergency, Bernardi said.

Arijs Rakstins, chief of project management for the Corps, said the problem is that the dredging is not a year-in, year-out project.

Since 1923, when the canal became a federally authorized project, it has been dredged every five to seven years. Rakstins said it has not been dredged since spring 1992.

"Because the dredging of the canal is not an annual project, it gets lower budget priority," Rakstins explained. "The administration accords annual projects a higher budget priority."

This year's city budget allocated $500,000 in matching funds to get rid of the dredging spoils, City Manager Rod Gould said.

Some of the spoils, contaminated by street runoff, have to be taken to Winter Island, on the eastern edge of Suisun Marsh in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, Bernardi said. The rest can be disposed of off Alcatraz Island in the bay.

"We have successfully lobbied Woolsey's office, which has put in a members request to the appropriations committee to augment the Corps budget for our project," said city spokeswoman Lydia Romero, who has been working with Bernardi on the dredging project.

Bernardi and Gould said the city is not in a position to pay the entire cost of the $2.3 million project. Should the city do so, they say, the Corps would never come back to dredge the canal again.

"The Corps would be more than willing to drop our project and walk away," Bernardi said. "The Corps should continue with its longstanding maintenance of the San Rafael Canal. The cost of the project is insignificant when compared to the other projects the Corps funds."

Rakstins, however, said the Corps' hands are tied by the budget.

"We would love to do it if funds are made available," he said.

Meanwhile, Jones said, each time the tide goes out, the canal fills up with more and more mud.

"It is heartbreaking to see how the canal is drying up. It's an ecological and economic disaster," Jones said.