September 27, 2006

BY AMANDA SCHOENBERG

Protecting Santa Cruz County’s fish and wildlife habitats became a little easier with an influx of $4,048,135 from the State Water Resources Control Board.

The funding awarded to the Santa Cruz County Resource Conservation District allows for 14 watershed, wetland and lagoon restoration projects that form part of the Integrated Watershed Restoration Program for Santa Cruz County. In the funding package, Watsonville scored $800,000 for the second phase of the Manabe Wetland Restoration Project and $300,000 to improve habitat and fish passage in Corralitos Creek.

According to Steve Palmisano, senior utilities engineer for the city of Watsonville, the funding will help restore eight acres of wetlands in the newly annexed property next summer. Workers are starting the first restoration phase this week near the Las Brisas subdivision, which entails removing 20,000 cubic yards of soil.

“They are lowering the ground so what was once a wetland becomes a wetland once again,” Palmisano said.

Some dirt will be piled into protected wildlife islands and the rest will likely be used during construction of businesses on the property. Restoration work also involves adding native plants and natural ponds in the area, which is currently used as farmland.

Money for the Corralitos Creek project will be used to improve the 40-year-old “fish ladder,” a 3-foot-wide, 30-foot-long stretch that allows fish to swim past city water diversion pipes. The ladder was added to ensure easy passage for fish, but concern about threatened steelhead salmon prompted the city to work toward developing a new ladder with longer, shallower steps for juvenile fish, Palmisano said.

“The overall goal is to improve habitat for the steelhead — it’s one of the most important steelhead streams on the Central Coast,” Palmisano said.

The Corralitos Creek funding represents one piece of what could be a $1 million project that will begin in 2007 or 2008, Palmisano said.

According to Karen Christensen, executive director of the Santa Cruz County Resource Conservation District, the influx in funding from the state comes after agencies banded together in 2003 through the Integrated Watershed Restoration Program to prioritize sediment reduction, fish passage and wetland restoration projects.

Rather than compete for grants, the IWRP is an opportunity to share resources and priorities, Christensen said.

The new funding also allows for other projects to ease fish passage and improve habitats for threatened steelhead Coho salmon and in Corralitos Creek and reduce sediment in the San Lorenzo River and Corralitos Creek watersheds.

“Especially in the context of competing priorities statewide, this is a huge win for our local watersheds,” Assemblymember John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) said in a written statement. “IWRP represents the very best in local and state government collaboration.”

The state grant also includes $100,000 to fund a new countywide permit coordination program administered by the Resource Conservation District to streamline the process of approving environmentally beneficial projects on private land in the county.