Work to be halted on San Diego Creek

Alicia Robinson

A county project to dredge sediment and clear vegetation from San

Diego Creek will be cut short when permits expire at midnight

tonight.

Work, which is mostly finished, will be halted today because of a

requirement that work be stopped if endangered birds are sighted in

the area.

The estimated $3.3-million, 2.5-mile creek clearing project began

in December. Orange County supervisors declared an emergency after

county officials told them the overgrown creek could flood into the

Irvine Ranch Water District’s Michelson Water Reclamation Plant and

send raw sewage into the Upper Newport Bay.

“The work is effectively done, or we have completed as much as we

can, mainly because of bird sightings,” said county Public Works

Director Herb Nakasone.

An Army Corps of Engineers permit for the creek clearing, which

expires at midnight, stipulated that work in the creek must stop to

protect the least Bell’s vireo’s nesting season. Birds were sighted

near the creek late last week and Monday, Nakasone said.

The creek is used as a flood control channel and has evolved into

a wildlife habitat area and a place to trap sediment to keep it from

filling in Newport Bay.

Workers won’t be in the creek after today but they might be on the

banks cleaning up after the project, he said.

The county has struggled to obtain emergency work permits for the

clearing from the California Coastal Commission and Army Corps of

Engineers, and environmentalists have watched the project closely,

claiming the project’s emergency status was used to circumvent the

closer scrutiny the regular permit process would have required.

The county is now working on a mitigation plan to replace the

habitat that was removed during the clearing. The plan must be

submitted to the Coastal Commission by April 19, Nakasone said.

Environmentalist Bob Caustin, founding director of Defend the Bay,

said the mitigation plan won’t be able to replace the riparian

habitat that was destroyed during the project, in part because no

studies were done before the work started.

“They don’t have an appropriate assessment as to what they tore

out, and when you talk about mitigation, where are they going to put

it?” Caustin asked. “It’s not going to be as valuable nor as

important to the habitat.”

Caustin said he stopped following the issue because he would have

had to file a lawsuit to force the county to do a proper

environmental assessment, and his group doesn’t have the resources

for another lengthy court battle.

The county misused the provisions in the law that allow emergency

work, he said.

“It was not an emergency,” Caustin said. “They’d known about it

for months before they came up at the end of 2003 with their

proposal.”

County officials have said obtaining nonemergency permits could

take several years, and before the creek was cleared it could only

handle a 10-year flood.

Nakasone said the county also is working on a maintenance plan for

the creek. The county’s goal is to continue the creek’s uses as a

flood control channel and animal habitat, he said.

“We’re trying to get a long-term maintenance plan that we could

work with so we don’t get into this situation [in the future],” he

said.