SFBA letter regarding the Sherman island project.

[Tony Soprano]

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/ ... 3-2010.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

[le noun]

[friggin old guy]

Thanks to everybody involved in this.......and who gets active on protecting against a real threat to access.

[Tony Soprano]

Here is the RVWA-SIKO Letter:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/229369607/RVW ... udy-Final1

[windstoked]

Many thanks to those addressing this issue on a formal level.
It's mind-boggling that the DWR would come into our sacred ground and spend 10 million dollars for a non-native species and then not even address mitigations for their impact upon us.
I can live with the fact that DWR doesn't spend a dime for kiter access, as it fits their long history of recurrent negligence to fulfill their statutory mandate to provide money for water-based recreational facilities around this state.
However, I can't see Little Baja being feasible for safe kiting with the pipes and surrounding log-barriers to protect them just above and below the launch site and the power lines being installed along the road to the facilities.
A long history of public use for a site establishes a prescriptive easement that cannot be revoked or encumbered without mitigations.

[kitecrazy]

Its been 4-5 months since their open response period. I wrote a letter to Ms. Kathleen Buchnoff, Senior Engineer at the CDWR in response to their initial study and I know of many others who also did.
Does anyone know if they have provided an official/unoffical response? Are we going to show up next year to find our beloved Sherman Island under transformation?

Their website doesn't show squat.
http://baydeltaoffice.water.ca.gov/

[Tony Soprano]

Its been 4-5 months since their open response period. I wrote a letter to Ms. Kathleen Buchnoff, Senior Engineer at the CDWR in response to their initial study and I know of many others who also did.
Does anyone know if they have provided an official/unoffical response? Are we going to show up next year to find our beloved Sherman Island under transformation?

Their website doesn't show squat.
http://baydeltaoffice.water.ca.gov/

https://www.scribd.com/doc/242622029/SFBAeNews-2014
On September 17, we met with managers and lawyers inthe Department to discuss the project and methods to address our concerns. We are optimisticthat this matter can be resolved through negotiations. The Department has indicated that theywill respond to our concerns with a proposal that would maintain access at the access and thesign, and allow improved access ramps after reconstruction of the levee and road on the way tothe County Park.For more information contact macmcgrath@comcast.net

[windstoked]

Thanks for the update.
It sounds somewhat encouraging, but too brief and non-specific to get your hopes up.
The question is not just whether they will preserve access, but will it be feasible for launching and landing kites. They should put the powerline extension to the fish release sites underground through that whole stretch. And they shouldn't make you cross the road with your kite flying to get to the ramp.
We need to maintain an alternate access to the county park just in case.