The headline could read “more than a thousand truckloads of dredge spoils, possibly containing contaminants, to be trucked over Highway 20 this summer and fall.”
Or, it could report; “Noyo Harbor District, caught between a federal deadline and state red tape is forced to spend tens of thousands of tax dollars trucking mostly clean sand to far-away landfill.”
Both story lines would provide a peek — but not the whole story — of why the harbor district is caught between 900 million pounds of dirt and a January 2012 deadline.
When other government agencies complain about having to “move a mountain” of deficit, they”re usually speaking metaphorically. For Noyo Harbor District, the old clich? is both a fiscal metaphor and actual gigantic pile of dirt. Information is currently incomplete on how clean or contaminated the “tailings” or “dredge spoils” may be.
As a result, the silts that washed off local redwood forests must be trucked, like household garbage, to a landfill or to Indian lands, a journey of at least 50 and maybe over 100 miles. The district must dredge by this fall to take advantage of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding, which is set to run out if the monumental task of removing at least 30,000 cubic yards of material (about 1,670 truckloads or roughly 900 million pounds) isn”t completed by the end of the year. Federal emergency funding was approved after floodwaters several years ago brought more silt than usual into the basin. Bid papers are set to go out next week.
“It”s possible,” said Harbor District Manager Jere Klenbach, who said all the work must be done during a window of time that begins in August, which gives plenty of time for a 30-day bidding period, district approval and the work to commence.
Even more important, removal of 30,000-plus cubic yards of material will open up space for the tailings to be removed when the harbor is dredged this fall.
Dredge spoils history
What and where are the so-called dredge spoils?
The mountain of tailings, estimated to total at least 400,000 cubic yards, is located off the northwest end Noyo River Bridge and to the north of the Noyo Harbor entrance. Covered with invasive pampas grass, the materials compose what looks like a towering horseshoe shaped levee above the Noyo beach parking lot. In the middle of the horseshoe, a sand pond controls runoff and allows easy removal of the materials, which look like clean sand. There is no room for more. There wouldn”t be any trouble at all if the district had a complete picture of what”s in the mountain, but learning that has proven cost-prohibitive.
Diana Henrioulle, a senior water resource control engineer for the California EPA said in a letter to the district that the central pile is 40 feet deep in some places, although original capacity was supposed to be a maximum of 22 feet.
To get a sense of the scale of the man-made pile, the 1986 book, “The Noyo,” by Beth Stebbins, reports that the first major dredging took place in the early 1920s. A photo shows a massive flat and empty Noyo beach that extends flat all the way to the base of the cliff Noyo River Bridge is attached to. All that dirt was added a little at a time over the past 90 years.
Why can”t the spoils be used locally?
Dredge tailings from the Noyo were used widely on the Mendocino Coast from the 1920s onward, transforming and literally uplifting bridges, roads and towns, historical records show. In the late 20th century, the tailings went to the former Caspar dump and were given away to people who needed fill.
Harbor District got into trouble when tailings were used as fill on Stornetta property. State laws now require that any such materials spread on land be “characterized.” Further, the land where the soils are being spread must also be studied and characterized.
If the two are different, even if neither are toxic, an extensive permitting process is required. In the past year, there was interest in using the spoils to build berms on the former Georgia Pacific mill site, it was reported at a district meeting. The biggest deal was when the Mendocino Coast Recreation and Parks District sought to move spoils to its Highway 20 property. The notion of using tailings on MCRPD land fell apart and the two agencies are now squabbling over who should pay a $10,996 bill for study costs.
Last year, Henrioulle said that tests by the hired consultant for the MCRPD deal, Lawrence and Associates, that went only three feet deep simply wasn”t enough to characterize the entire pile. Much more study is needed and many state questions must be answered before the district can dispose of the spoils outside of a landfill.
“The limited information that we have regarding the material stockpiled at the site suggests that you have partially characterized only a small portion of that material….Given the questions and information gaps…, it is difficult for us to determine the appropriate nature and scope of permitting requirements for your project,” Henrioulle wrote. “We are interested in working with you and others to find viable ways to reuse and/or dispose of dredge materials in a manner that is protective of water quality. We recommend that if you wish to pursue the project…., you address the comments and questions presented above in order to better define the scope of your project and to help us to better assess the potential water quality impacts and your proposed measures to protect water quality.”
She said recently that the questions asked last fall remain unanswered.
This reporter reviewed all agenda packets and requested all information related to the content of the tailings. District files provided contain very little about testing of the tailings. Reports in the Advocate-News and other newspapers over time have stated that tests have shown the sands do not contain any significant contamination. Elevated levels of arsenic have been found in the spoils, which is a product of acidic redwood forest soils.
Henrioulle also said the issue of dealing with old dredge spoils under current law isn”t unique to Noyo Harbor. She provided information about a similar situation in Humboldt County, where the district is trying to reopen an old dredge spoils site.
Other options
For now, the district has elected to quit trying to get rid of the tailings locally and after a competitive bidding process, send them to one of two landfills in Sonoma and Marin counties, or to Indian tribal lands in Covelo. Different laws than those regulated by the state and federal governments govern Indian sovereign lands.
A plan to dispose of dredge tailings in the ocean off MacKerricher State Park has been studied but nothing has come of that notion as of yet, either. Disposing of spoils in deep, federal waters more than three miles from shore has also been explored.
Driven by deadline pressure and by difficulties with state environmental laws, its hard to imagine a less “green” solution, or the gigantic size of the “carbon footprint” of this trucking, landfilling operation.
Even if the district clears enough space for another round of dredging by trucking to faraway landfills, there will be the problem of how to get rid of tailings the next time, when special federal funding is unlikely. Once the 30,000 cubic yards of material is removed, the rest could be more easily studied. There will be public meetings on the subject beginning this week.
Tommy Ancona, a member of the Noyo Harbor Commission, says nobody who wants dirt need be disappointed in the long run.
“There is plenty to go around. We are aren”t going to run out,” Ancona said at a recent meeting.
How and when did it start?
Who actually put those tailings there? When did it all start?
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Noyo Harbor District work as a team on dredging. The Corps is responsible for dredging the river channel and the district is responsible for providing a disposal site (which is actually owned by the City of Fort Bragg). The Corps has already awarded the dredging contract to a Bay Area firm. A Bay Area business journal enthused that virtually all the jobs from dredging would go to Bay Area residents. Separate from the dredging of the navigable channel, the district is responsible for and pays for periodic dredging of the now tsunami-damaged mooring basin.
The river is dredged to a depth of 10 feet at zero tide. That means with a high tide of six feet, the depth would be 16 feet. With a -1 tide, the depth would be nine feet.
The river has been adding silt since the area was last dredged in 2009 and is due this fall, with $1.3 million in federal funding approved. Without dredging, the harbor would become impassible, and more quickly, than in historical times.
The Noyo River channel historically has been dredged every two to seven years, depending on federal funding availability. The mooring basin is dredged on an approximately 7- to 10-year cycle. According to the Corps, the river channel generates between 10,000 and 30,000 cubic yards each time it is dredged. The mooring basin generates about 50,000 CY of dredge material each time it is dredged, according to a federal website. Cumulatively, NHD estimates that it needs a disposal site for about 45,000 to 50,000 cubic yards of material every two years.
The amount of silt generated upstream today is vastly more than before the logging era.
The entrance to Noyo Harbor was deep enough to accept three-masted wooden ships when settlers first came about 1850 to set up lumber mills and confront the Indian population. However, there was no north harbor or marina areas as now exists. There were large wetlands and a much wider river, with a gentler slope.
In the 19th century, logs were cut, floated down Noyo River and filled the entire basin (what is now the entire North Harbor land and water) in photos of the MacPherson sawmill dating from the 1860s. The exclusive use by lumber mills ended in the late 19th century, when fishing began to rise as industry. The original access, dangerous and strewn with rocks as it was, had filled in, gradually made getting any boat out of the harbor near impossible. The Noyo”s outflow had been lessened since the photos of the 1860s, but began to get help from regular dredging in about 1923.
Tailings from that operation became the foundation for elevated areas of the harbor. A giant tidal flat and dying town of Noyo were uplifted to create the current harbor area and protect it from frequent flooding.
In the 1940s, Frank Hyman was granted a deed to the entire tidal flat and began building a bulkhead that would elevate what is now North Noyo Harbor. About that same time, the rocks at the mouth of the harbor that sunk many ships, even when the channel was clear, were finally removed. In the 1950s and 1960s developer Everett Hamman developed Dolphin Isle and the marina was dredged and mooring basin created.
Dredging is needed today because the river”s natural delta area was turned into the south and north harbor; it”s needed so often now because of continuing erosion from legacy logging.
Numerous state reports identify the continuing catastrophe of erosion on the Noyo. Modern lumber companies invest heavily in erosion prevention and repair — the continuing damage from what is called “legacy logging.” In 1998, Noyo River was listed as sediment-impaired by the California North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board due to the erosion problem.
It”s gotten worse since then. The federal EPA has found that continued legacy logging erosion problems impact fishing, water quality and life in the Noyo River. A 2007 study showed siltation had increased 15 percent in the Noyo River since 2005. The erosion problem has continued to worsen in both flooding and drier years, federal and state reports show.
Email Frank Hartzell at frankhartzell@gmail.com.
