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| Water advocates speak up on sinking stream gauges By Greg Thomas [ greg@hmbreview.com ] Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 9:45 AM PDT A sensor that alerts Pescaderans when water levels in Pescadero Creek are threatening to flood the town is in imminent danger of being decommissioned. That was the underlining point in a U.S. Geological Survey letter addressed to the county Resource Conservation District in May. It explained that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to cut funding to two stream gauges on the Coastside Oct. 1. The other gauge rests in Pilarcitos Creek in Half Moon Bay. USGS monitors flow, volume, and timing in those particular streams round the clock and posts the data on its Web page in real-time. Agencies and regulatory bodies on all levels of government use the data produced by the gauges in endeavors pertaining to public drinking water, environmental and infrastructure protection, agriculture, and flooding, among others. “Countless day-to-day management decisions are made based on this information,” county Resource Conservation District Executive Director Kellyx Nelson said. “This is our record of what has happened in these watersheds and what’s currently happening … It’s essential (to keep track of) the historical record, current management (decisions), and to know the effects of our future actions.” Pescaderans keep a close eye on the feed, especially as the rainy season approaches, so that homeowners on Stage Road know when to start sandbagging their front doors. “This isn’t your ordinary stream gauge,” Pesacdero Municipal Advisory Council Chair Catherine Peery said. “This is how we know the roads are going to flood. We have a link on our Web site to our gauge so we know, if (water) gets above a certain level, oh my God, the road is going to flood. This is about emergency preparedness and disaster prevention.” When the water level hits a certain point, residents have roughly an hour and a half to prepare before the creek overflows. Peery penned a letter to the Army Corps’ San Francisco district last week describing the urgency and importance of the 58-year-old gauge to people in Pescadero. South Coast residents are often on their own when it comes to advocating for public services in their neck of the woods. That’s not the case with the stream gauge. Not only do Pescaderans have the support of the county Resource Conservation District in this case, regional, state and national environmental bodies are chiming in as well to try to protect their investments in long-term water-related projects. “Eliminating these stream gauges couldn’t come at a worse time for the National Marine Fisheries Service and the (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Restoration Center,” wrote Patrick Rutten, NOAA Restoration Center southwest region supervisor, in a June letter to the Army Corps. The gauges are “essential” in NOAA’s efforts to replenish imperiled populations of steelhead trout and coho salmon in Coastside watersheds, Rutten wrote. Cutting off the data feed from that creek has implications in other areas as well. Another one of NOAA’s objectives is to develop a recycled water initiative with Sewer Authority Mid-Coastside. In his letter, Rutten implies that discontinuing the stream gauge in Half Moon Bay could threaten that project as well. The two Coastside gauges are the only ones in the county on the chopping block this year, and two of four the Army Corps San Francisco district plans to decommission at the moment. The other two are in Monterey and Sonoma counties. The Coastside gauges would cost about $31,300 apiece to operate through September 2010. Between 400 and 500 similar gauges exist statewide, according to Larry Freeman, USGS supervisory hydrologic technician for the survey’s field office in Marina. Most are funded locally by water districts, cities and counties that use the information for various conservation and restoration endeavors, Freeman said. The benefit of local funding is that gauge operation is not dependent on a wide-reaching federal body like the Army Corps, he added. “The gauges on those two creeks aren’t associated with any Corps projects,” said U.S. Army Corps of Engineers San Francisco District spokesman J.D. Hardesty, accounting for the entity’s decision to halt funds to the Coastside gauges. Nelson, at the county Resource Conservation District, disagrees. “That $30,000 a year for that gauge is probably leveraging well over a million dollars of activities going on in the watershed each year. … The environmental benefits offset the cost of lots of other projects they do,” she said. Freeman is continuing to scour the region for funding sources to keep the gauges afloat beyond Oct. 1. If he doesn’t get the money in time, he will personally shut down the online data stream and disassemble the devices. Shutting down the stream gauges, effectively blacking out the data, is devastating to some. “When something has value to water agencies, to farmers, to environmentalists, (and) to residents worried about flooding, it’s probably pretty important,” Nelson said. “When all these people are singing the same song it’s probably worth listening to.” |