anchor-outs have significantly harmed the ecosystem

[ThereAndBack]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

10 milimeters is almost a half inch.
That is a pretty ridiculous forecast for sea level rise per year don’t you think?

It is all part of the wetlands restoration projects.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by Montanan

Where are you going to put your boat.

San Leandro Marina Will Close Soon, Further Squeezing Sailing (462 slips gone)

San Leandro Marina has been nearly empty for years and many Bay Area marinas continue to advertise for tenants. There is no shortage of slips here, with, or without that particular marina.

[sailorchic34]

On the wetlands knocking down the wave peaks thingy. I don't remember there being much Wetlands on the Ocean side of the peninsula. Nor on the Oakland / Fremont side. Certainly there's no Wetlands around Richardson Bay or Berkeley /Richmond. Least not anymore.

There are wetlands on the Northside of San Pablo Bay. But even the southerly winds in winter storms are knockdown by the shallows in the bay, long before they get to the wetlands. not sure what that goldbeck guy is smoking, but prevailing winds are from the West Northwest which puts the restored wetlands in San Pablo on the windward side of the Bay. Not going to be knocking down any waves there.

I would be for restoring Wetlands on the peninsula but there's a whole lot of buildings that have to be knocked down, in downtown San Francisco, before that happens. That's not really going to happen though.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

10 milimeters is almost a half inch.
That is a pretty ridiculous forecast for sea level rise per year don’t you think?

SATELLITE DATA: 1993-PRESENT
Sea Level Rate of Rise 3.3 millimeters per year (±0.4mm) = ± 1/8"

[sailorchic34]

As far as silted in Marinas go, the Petaluma Marina has less than two feet of water at A dock (40 FOOT slips) at mean low water. Most of the big boats have left. The Petaluma turning basin what used to be a weekend destination for many yacht clubs, is also silted in.

The City of Petaluma solution is to install a small boat dock for kayaks paddle boards Etc.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by sailorchic34

...I would be for restoring Wetlands on the peninsula but there's a whole lot of buildings that have to be knocked down, in downtown San Francisco, before that happens. That's not really going to happen though.

Sooner or later the San Andreas fault will open things up allowing the water in while otherwise leveling the place.

Back to the removing the boaters from rich people's backyards to save the eelgrass forever discussion.

[Montanan]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

10 milimeters is almost a half inch.
That is a pretty ridiculous forecast for sea level rise per year don’t you think?

The sea level rise differs depending on where one is located and also it is a relative measure as in a number of places the land is sinking. Venice comes to mind. The sea is anything but level, it rises differently depending on what part of the globe or side of a continent you are measuring from.

I suspect one can come up with lots of data points.

Here is one snipet that is the first that popped up so can't say it has anymore foundation then others.

"Sea level has risen over 6 inches nationally since 1950, but recently, its rate of increase has accelerated. In the last five years, sea level has risen 66% faster than the historical rate, and is now rising by an average of one inch every five years. While it took 60 years for the sea level to rise about 6 inches nationally, scientists now forecast that in just the next 20 years, the sea will have risen by another 6 inches.

The rate of sea level rise is not the same all over the country. In some towns, the sea level is rising much faster than the national average. On the East Coast and the Gulf Coast, the sea is rising by one inch every three years due to sinking land and a slowing Gulf Stream. On the West Coast, the sea level is increasing at a slower pace than the national average because the land is actually rising due to shifting tectonic plates."



Montana used to be sea front property, and long after that its western part and the panhandle of Idaho was flooded by the humongous Glacial Lake Missoula on repeated occasions. I can readily see remnants of the waveshaped shorelines a couple of thousand feet higher on the hills near my port town of Polson. Glacial Lake Missoula would break open and then catastrophically drain out across Washington forming the Channeled Scab Lands and forming the Columbia River Gorge. The Glacial Lake measured about 7,770 square kilometres (3,000 sq mi) and contained about 2,100 cubic kilometres (500 cu mi) of water, half the volume of Lake Michigan. Flathead Lake [the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi] is the primary remnant of the glacial lake. The Glacial Lake Missoula was the result of an ice dam on the Clark Fork of the Columbia River caused by the southern encroachment of a finger of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet into the Idaho Panhandle (at the present day location of Clark Fork, Idaho, at the east end of Lake Pend Oreille). The height of the ice dam typically approached 610 metres (2,000 ft), flooding the valleys of western Montana approximately 320 kilometres (200 mi) eastward. It was the largest ice-dammed lake known to have occurred. The periodic rupturing of the ice dam resulted in the Missoula Floods – cataclysmic floods that swept across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge approximately 40 times during a 2,000 year period.

I have read that the estimates are that when the Lake would burst open the water flow was ten times greater than all of today's rivers of the world combined.

[Montanan]

Originally Posted by sailorchic34

As far as silted in Marinas go, the Petaluma Marina has less than two feet of water at A dock (40 FOOT slips) at mean low water. Most of the big boats have left. The Petaluma turning basin what used to be a weekend destination for many yacht clubs, is also silted in.

The City of Petaluma solution is to install a small boat dock for kayaks paddle boards Etc.

Petaluma Marina is financially underwater.

They have had to reduce the number of liveaboards from 12 to 6

Petaluma River has not been dredged in years and is silting up, well at least as of the article from 2017. Perhaps needs a really good flooding to wash it 14 miles out to San Pablo Bay.

https://www.petaluma360.com/news/518...etaluma-marina

"ERIC GNECKOW
ARGUS-COURIER STAFF May 31, 2017
It was a day of celebration when Al Alys pulled his boat into the Petaluma Marina, the first customer to dock when the facility opened in the summer of 1990. Recreational boaters considered the marina a sorely needed alternative to the popular but spartan moorings at the downtown turning basin, and Alys, a leader in a group who lobbied on behalf of the project for years, was the one to break the ribbon on opening day.

But the honeymoon was short-lived. Soon after opening, and for the next 25 years, Alys said, he and others close to the project watched with concern as the city-owned marina struggled, sinking slowly under a growing construction debt.

“It’s strapped for revenue,” said Alys, a former bank CEO and founding member of the Petaluma Yacht Club who today keeps a boat at the marina. “It had a slow start in terms of occupancy, and still hasn’t achieved enough occupancy to generate fees to pay back the loan.”

A generation after the first boats pulled in to the Petaluma Marina, the facility off Baywood Drive is financially underwater, facing a construction debt with the state that has grown by more than $2 million since the city’s last interest payment in 1998, according to Petaluma’s year-end financial reports for the fiscal year ended June 30 and information from the state of California. Accumulated unpaid interest on the original $3.6 million loan from the California Division of Boating and Waterways has pushed the total debt to $6.18 million, exceeding the $4.8 million value of the marina itself before depreciation.

When launched, the marina was envisioned as a self-sustaining enterprise. But the loan is casting a shadow over its finances, as is the looming yet currently unknown cost of removing years of accumulated sediment that users say impacts the ability for some boats to use the facility. Without enough revenue to build a sufficient reserve on its own, it is likely that the marina, a fixture at the aquatic gateway to Rivertown, will need to draw on other sources of city funding for support.


Petaluma officials said they have been actively working to turn around the marina’s finances, including a series of upgrades and an increase to certain fees. The city also maintains that the state ultimately will be willing to modify the loan — in 2007, the Department of Boating agreed to forgive Sonoma County for accumulated interest on the loan that built Bodega Bay’s Spud Point Marina, which faced similar challenges.

Yet the state remains vague about its plans for the Petaluma Marina, after telling city officials in 2006 that it refused to modify the terms of the loan but would allow the facility to otherwise operate as usual. No sweeping protocol exists for addressing the state’s troubled marina loans because the vast majority of borrowers are paying without any issues. Of the 275 public and private marina loans currently on California’s books, only six, including Petaluma’s, are delinquent, according to Gloria Sandoval, a Boating and Waterways spokeswoman.

The loan contract officially puts the state first in line for repayment from the Petaluma Marina’s revenue. That provision has yet to be exercised, however, which has allowed the revenue to continue covering at least a portion of the marina’s costs.


https://www.sonomanews.com/business/...y.html?sba=AAS
ARGUS-COURIER STAFF June 12, 2017
Petaluma agreed to a new longterm lease with the state for the Petaluma Marina, even as the lack of river maintenance has sunk the facility’s finances.

The 20-year lease with the California State Lands Commission will offer more favorable terms to the city and allow it to recoup rents from people living on their boats in the marina.

The city inked the original 30-year lease for the 13.89-acre property adjacent to the Petaluma River near Highway 101 in 1988. The deal included a potential 10-year extension. But city officials said they could get a better deal by signing a new longterm agreement.

“We’d be better off going with a new lease than extending the old lease,” Public Works Director Dan St. John told the city council Monday.

The new lease lowers the city’s annual payments from $14,184 to $13,480. In addition, it will allow the city to collect rent from people who live on their boats. Currently 12 people live on boats in the marina, though the practice is unpermitted.

Jason Earl, a management analyst for the city, said that the State Lands Commission would allow up to six live-aboards in the marina. The city has two years to reduce the number down to six.

“Speaking with the State Lands Commission, they informed us that the 12 live-aboards are not authorized,” he said. “They agreed to six.”


The city estimates it can make up to $30,000 in rent from these arrangements. Councilman Chris Albertson asked about conditions for those living on boats in the marina. St. John said that there are bathroom facilities for their use, and pump stations so that tenants do not dump waste into the river.

The Petaluma Marina and adjoining Sheraton Hotel and office complex, was built in 1990 as a highly visible landmark at the city’s southern gateway. Since then, the facility’s finances have been underwater, according to a 2016 Argus-Courier investigation.

The city has yet to pay off the original construction debt on the facility and unpaid interest pushed the total debt with the state to $6.18 million as of last year.

Recently, the lack of river dredging has made the marina even less attractive to boaters. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which had maintained a regular dredging cycle on the river, has not serviced the waterway in more than a decade, leaving silt and sandbars that deter boaters not wanting to strand their pricey yachts.

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, has been working with neighboring jurisdictions on a plan to get local governments and industries to fund a regional dredging program.

[Montanan]

Petaluma River will not be dredged this year, now 15 years since it was cleared by the Army Corp of Engineers. Maybe it should be turned over to the US Navy instead of the Army to handle.

https://www.petaluma360.com/news/903...f=most&sba=AAS
ARGUS-COURIER STAFF December 10, 2018
The once mighty Petaluma River, a former hub for commerce and recreation, used to be one of the defining features of the southern Sonoma County landscape and a vital link between Petaluma and the San Pablo Bay.

Now, 15 years removed from the last dredging, an 18-mile tributary many residents have dubbed “the heart of the city” has become a muddy, silt-choked slough, with little relief in sight.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency under the Department of Defense, is supposed to dredge the upper Petaluma River every four years, and the mouth where it meets the bay every three years. The flats channel, which begins beneath the Highway 37 overpass east of Novato, was last dredged in 1998.

For more than a decade, elected officials have been subjected to a hamster-wheel cycle of request, write, lobby and hope, anxiously awaiting word from the USACE that the Petaluma River would make the cut for a federally-funded cleanup.

For now, that wheel will continue to spin.

In the Corps of Engineers’ 2019 work plan, announced Thanksgiving week, the Petaluma River did not get approved for dredging, dealing another major blow that could impact flood control measures and compound revenue losses already being felt by the local economy.

Congressman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, who described the project as “the highest priority in my district,” said he was furious when he found out Petaluma was, once again, left off the list.

“We got all the right assurances, we did all the right things,” he said. “We have been setting this up for several years. We were led to believe we were in position to get funding. To once again be bypassed, to me, is unjustifiable and unacceptable.”

Local officials were feeling optimistic after the USACE invested $600,000 over the past year to study the project, preliminary measures that hadn’t been taken since the last dredging, said Jason Beatty, assistant director of Petaluma’s Public Works and Utilities Department.

The agency commissioned a hydrographic survey, performed sediment testing, and pursued the necessary permits and construction documents over the course of several months, beginning in December 2017. To prepare for the city’s share of the project, work began at the local deposit site, Schollenberger Park, where materials are off-hauled.

All that was left was funding for the project, which federal officials estimate will cost $10 million.


“They were encouraging,” Beatty said of his ongoing conversations with the USACE’s project managers. “They thought it would get put on the work plan this year.”

USACE spokesperson Jay Kinberger, the San Francisco district navigation program manager, said the decisions are usually made based on the amount of a value a port provides to the national economy, and “which projects yield the biggest bang for the buck.”

Even though small ports like the Petaluma River are allocated a 10 percent share of funding each cycle, it still has to compete with harbors across the country, Kinberger said. On the opposite end of the spectrum are ports like the Oakland Harbor, for example, which represents the third largest anchorage on the West Coast.

“It’s a hard question,” Kinberger said. “What it really boils down to is the Corps’ budgeting process. Essentially we put in a capability statement for all of our projects. Then through the budgeting process, those are racked and stacked and weighed against each other. Ultimately the decision is made built on capability given scarce resources.”


Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbitt, whose district encompasses the Petaluma River, described the situation as a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” With each funding cycle that passes, the ability for the waterway to multiply the federal investment gets increasingly more difficult.

Commercial tonnage is a fraction of what it was a decade ago, with barges carrying less weight into the silted waters. Since transport habits are now adapting, the Petaluma River’s profile as a commercial route and its contribution to the national economy suffers.


“The longer you put it off, the more expensive it becomes or the more problematic it becomes,” Rabbitt said. “You try to be optimistic.”

In the weeks and months before the work plan was announced, Huffman said he was a “squeaky wheel” in Washington D.C., making calls up the ladder at the Pentagon to try and make the case for the project.

At this point, reeling from the news of a defeat, the congressman said he’s entertaining every possibility to try and figure out how best to approach the issue going forward. In a district heavily skewed toward Democrats, with a reputation for constantly challenging President Trump, there could certainly be a political motive, Huffman said.

“It doesn’t feel right and doesn’t smell right,” he said.

In the absence of maintenance, fewer vessels — commercial or recreational — venture into the waterway, fearful of mud banks and the merciless low tide. As a result, popular events have been canceled, like the 2018 Lighted Boat Parade and the Petaluma Yacht Club’s Memorial Day event, which has now missed the last two years and heavily impacted its fundraising efforts.

In Nov. 2017, Petaluma Yacht Club Commodore McKenzie Smith estimated river traffic provides $1.2 million annually to area businesses.

Marie McCusker, executive director of the Petaluma Downtown Association, said river-related tourism is down about 85 percent. Riverfront locales like Taps and Dempsey’s Restaurant and Brewery are feeling the effects of a lack of dredging year-round now, with patio seats facing a waterway defined by a notorious mud island.

“They are concerned,” McCusker said. “When you have a restaurant on the river, there’s a certain ambiance that goes with it.”

But beyond commerce or slimming retail profits, what worries mayor-elect Teresa Barrett, who promoted river enhancement throughout her campaign, is the taxpayer-funded flood mitigations that become far less effective.


“It’s almost unconscionable that there isn’t money for this issue at the national level, given what we’ve heard from our own country and the (United Nations’) assessment on climate change,” Barrett said. “Any area or city exposed to tidal changes is more vulnerable than others, and in Sonoma County that’s Petaluma.”

The one silver lining is the change in majority of the House of Representatives following this year’s midterm elections. With Huffman serving on the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, which oversees water resource programs at the USACE, officials were confident his role would benefit Petaluma even more over the next two years.

Once the river does, in fact, get dredged, the congressman hopes to establish a potential private-public partnership that would align cities and agencies with disregarded tributaries throughout the North Bay, combining resources and cycling projects in a way that would increase the appeal for USACE funding.

“This community has done all the right things and we’ve done it the right way. You can’t ask anymore,” Huffman said. “I’m not going to roll over and stand for it. We’re going to fight for this.”

[sailorchic34]

Petaluma will never pay off their marina. Actually most of the liveaboards have left. I know because I used to be there. The full-time Harbormaster was let go 2 years ago and they have a part-time guy come in 3 days a week for a few hours a day.

Want to buy fuel there. You have to call city facilities and they will call you back within 24 hours. The city itself has major financial difficulties. The marina is the least of it.

By the way, when they talk about the river being dredged that does not include the Marina. That's a whole separate issue.

[Montanan]

Originally Posted by sailorchic34

On the wetlands knocking down the wave peaks thingy. I don't remember there being much Wetlands on the Ocean side of the peninsula. Nor on the Oakland / Fremont side. Certainly there's no Wetlands around Richardson Bay or Berkeley /Richmond. Least not anymore.

There are wetlands on the Northside of San Pablo Bay. But even the southerly winds in winter storms are knockdown by the shallows in the bay, long before they get to the wetlands. not sure what that goldbeck guy is smoking, but prevailing winds are from the West Northwest which puts the restored wetlands in San Pablo on the windward side of the Bay. Not going to be knocking down any waves there.

I would be for restoring Wetlands on the peninsula but there's a whole lot of buildings that have to be knocked down, in downtown San Francisco, before that happens. That's not really going to happen though.

As to the historical wetlands, those are not within our memories time period.

The Delta has been drastically altered most of the islands were wetlands.
There were extensive wetlands along the east bay, even up into and including Lake Merritt which remains tidal and along the shores of Berkeley and Emeryville, of course the island of Alameda and Oakland's estuary and the port of Oakland have been extensive filled wetlands. Lot's of the shoreline of San Francisco has been extensively filled in. What you see today doesn't resemble anything like it once was. I live in Redwood Shores and that entire area is diked wetlands, ditto for Foster City.

Wetland losses to date have been enormous through-out San Francisco Bay (hereafter, the bay), ranging from 70% to 93% loss of historic area across regions). Over 10,000 hectares (ha) of tidal wetlands remain in the bay (North, Central and South bays), with over 5,000 ha in Suisun Bay. Tidal freshwater wetlands in the Delta were affected first, with substantial diking for agriculture occurring in the late 1800s . While agricultural practices also affected areas in eastern Suisun Bay, most of the tidal wetlands within the western part of Suisun Bay were converted to non-tidal wetlands for duck hunting, and have been managed in this way since the late 1800s. Wetlands in San Pablo Bay were diked for grazing and other agricultural uses, and large areas also were used for salt production. Similarly, massive salt pond construction, along with urban development, affected large areas of tidal wetlands in the south and central San Francisco Bay.
The image below is indicative of much of the zones of marsh wetlands, historical and current day status - either actual, recently restored or planned for restoration. As you can readily see much has been converted to dryland [diked and / or filled] or converted to evaporative salt ponds, Google Earth images of the salt ponds is impressive and daunting.

It is great to see some of the former marshlands being recovered, the scale of the recent projects have been substantial in acreage; it being relatively easy to undike a region, entirely a lot larger and unrealistic task to dig out fill or to remove developed lands.

The islands in the Delta are very prone / at risk to flooding and I recall back in the day some of them being allowed to remain flooded when their levies broke; construction and maintenance of levies is an expensive proposition and sometimes it just no longer pencils in to keep them for agricultural uses. Haven't kept up on the management policies and practices of the Delta in last decade or so, so completely ignorant of what is going on upriver. Loved to go up there with the Sea Scouts and also water skiing - my brother had his ski boat kept at Discovery Isle in their tall storage facility. One just made a call ahead of time and his boat would be placed in the water and fueled ready to go out and have fun by the marina personnel and similarly when done for the day, one just tied the boat up and handed the keys to the dock staff and they would lift it and place it back in the multi-level storage. So tremendously convenient.

[Don C L]

To get back to anchoring harming the sea floor for a moment, might I suggest anchoring bow and stern more often to avoid dragging a long swath of chain around with every breeze and tidal shift? Looking at the aerials of Richardson Bay, which really is an unnecessary mess, it looks pretty clear to me anyway that if those were anchored with two anchors, and they could be Bahamian moorings, not necessarily "cyclone" moorings, there would have been far less damage. (Along the lines of post 21)

[fivecapes]

How they address it in the Balearics

CBBAsea: Reserva de fondeos en las Islas Baleares



https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...22098103004428

[SV THIRD DAY]

Does anyone else see the Irony that when a MMGW study tells us CO2 is destroying the planet those who have sniffed out the agenda of their fake science are called "deniers" by some of the same folks who have rightly sniffed out the agenda with this fake science?

We not take you back to your regularly scheduled Denying of Science.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY

Does anyone else see the Irony that when a MMGW study tells us CO2 is destroying the planet those who have sniffed out the agenda of their fake science are called "deniers" by some of the same folks who have rightly sniffed out the agenda with this fake science? ...

Are you saying that some 'deniers' - are calling some other 'deniers' - 'deniers?
Just trying to understand your statement.