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The Seaside Company is threatening to sue the City and the State if a settlement in their favor isn't reached. City attorney, John Barisone, is refusing access to public records on this issue, citing the California Government Code 6254 which "expressly exempts from disclosure records pertaining to pending litigation to which a public agency is a party until the pending litigation or claim has been finally adjudicated or otherwise settled." In other words, it's none of the public's business until the deal is done.
Fortunately, The Beach Area Working Group has been successful in obtaining documents and details of this land swap from other sources. The city would receive three small, unbuildable parcels in exchange for the clear title to the river mouth acreage. Two parcels are a section of the main beach by the volleyball area, the third is an area behind the fence of the Seaside Company's Sea and Sand Motel on West Cliff Drive adjacent to Dutra Overlook.
The City's intent to sign-off public interest in the property may be in violation of its own Charter. According to City Charter, Section 1428, "The rights of the City in and to the waterfront and tidelands . . . are inalienable, unless authorized by the affirmative vote of the qualified electors of the City of Santa Cruz." Yet to facilitate the expansion and development of a private corporation, the public is being excluded from the process, and the Council majority will decide the fate of these lands behind closed doors.
The Santa Cruz City Council may sign-off public interests in the river mouth parcels and approve the beach plan before the end of summer. For more information contact the Beach Area Working Group, 831-458-3434.
The levee system was constructed in 1959 at a time when the standard engineering solution to flooding was to convert natural rivers to smooth walled channels with virtually no riparian vegetation. The presence of vegetation in such a channel slows down the water, and thereby increases the depth of water and the chance of flooding. Thus, maintenance of older levee systems requires that the riparian vegetation in the channel be periodically removed so that it will not impede flood flows.
Since the time of construction, the importance of riparian habitat has been recognized. Today, the engineering community is more willing to design levee systems with enough capacity to provide both flood protection and riparian habitat.
The levee improvements were deemed necessary because experience has demonstrated that the existing San Lorenzo levee system does not have enough capacity to provide Santa Cruz with adequate flood protection. The City of Santa Cruz and the Corps of Engineers have designed new improvements to the levee system to provide a higher level of flood protection, while also allowing for the development of the riparian community. Without these new improvements, the City of Santa Cruz will be continually forced to remove the riparian habitat within the channel below Highway One.
The rescheduling of this project has not yet been approved by Congress, so there is an opportunity to restore funding for the project to the 1997 budget. Representative Sam Farr (D-Carmel) is committed to seek the $9 million federal contribution to the $17.9 million project, but he needs your support.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Bruce Van Allen urges people to contact Representative Farr and Senators Boxer and Feinstein to thank them for their past support of the levee project and to request that they work to return funding to the project. President Clinton's Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, should also be contacted. He played a key role in obtaining the original Congressional authorization for the project.
Without your help, the levee project will be delayed for at least five years. If the project is delayed to help balance the federal budget this year it will probably never be implemented.
Dennis Jackson is a local hydrologist and a Sierra Club member.
At the end of September, as part of the San Lorenzo River Festival activities organized by
Bruce van Allen, some of us walked up the river--six days to walk from mouth to source.
I went on day three, with a group that walked from Cowell State Park to Ben Lomond--mostly
in the middle of the river. Great fun.
On the way we stopped for lunch at Highlands Park (delicious sandwiches prepared by the
Valley Women's Club), and there by the river were about twenty students from the Quail
Hollow Elementary School. Aided by teacher Barry Burt, they were finding out lots of things
about the river. They looked at the wildlife in the water. There were fish (young steelhead?)
and crayfish. One sixth grader showed me stone fly larvae, and little creatures called scuds.
What I most enjoyed, however, involved their measurements of stream flow. I had never seen
it done before, and the children showed me how to do it. They donned their waders. Then at
a relatively smooth-flowing section of the stream they stretched a tape across the river to measure
its width. At five equally-spaced points along that tape, they measured the depth of the water,
and so modeled the cross section of the stream. Then they took three ping-pong balls, dropped
them in at three equally-spaced points at the tape, and with timers, measured how long it took
each ball to travel fifty feet. They did this three times, to get an average water speed.
All the numbers were carefully entered on a form sheet by one of the students sitting on the
bank (she had a pile of form sheets on a clip-board). A few punches of the calculator to multiply
the stream's cross section by its velocity, and there it was: About 54 cubic feet per second.
Physicists call this quantity the "flux". What I saw was an excellent way to learn the meaning
of this term. Good physics, good math, and good strong connections to our natural world!
Next time my UCSC physics students want an explanation of "flux", I'll give them this example.
We are trying to arrange that one of our river forums early next year will focus on the work of
our school children, with Barry Burt (Quail Hollow School), Jane Orbuch (San Lorenzo Valley
High) and others, along with their students. It's not firm yet, but stay tuned. We'll tell you when.
Should be a great show!
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