Table of
Contents
The
Other Slough
Winter Stewardship:
It's the Water!
Slough
Speak
Stewardship Budget
Doubles
Sandholdt Legacy Grows
Map: Moro Cojo Protected Lands
Second
Annual Spring Member Walk
ESF
doubles Moro Cojo protected lands
The
Foundation's latest acquisition creates a 390-acre restorable
wetland on Moro Cojo Slough, which was once slated for heavy
industry, including an oil refinery.
Moro
Cojo Slough is a tributary of Elkhorn Slough – and a bit
like the little brother. It has no national research reserve,
no visitor paths, no kayak access. Its backdrop is not oak-
and chaparral-covered hills, but the looming towers of the power
plant. Little known and less scenic, Moro Cojo Slough nonetheless
plays the same critical biological role its larger brother,
like all wetlands, plays.
Moro Cojo Slough may be the little brother, but it’s not
that much smaller than Elkhorn Slough. Forty percent of what
we call the Elkhorn Slough watershed actually drains into Moro
Cojo Slough. In other words, it’s a big part of what the
Elkhorn Slough Foundation is dedicated to protecting. Protection
of Moro Cojo Slough almost doubled earlier this winter, when
the Foundation acquired 183 critical acres along the main channel
(map).
The newly acquired property adjoins 207 acres protected by ESF
in 1998 (see more photos here).
Together these two properties form a 390-acre restorable wetland,
one of the largest such tracts on the California coast. “This
is a tremendous opportunity,” says ESF Executive Director
Mark Silberstein. “We can restore a major coastal wetland
on land that was not productive farmland – and that was
once slated for heavy industry. In the space of a generation,
we will see a threatened landscape restored.”
A generation ago, the lower Moro Cojo Slough was a natural wetland.
Seventy years ago there were Steelhead and Surfperch in its
waters. In the 1930s and 1940s much of it was diked and drained,
though it remained too wet to be productive farm land. Crops
rotted and tractors and cattle got stuck. (The name’s origins
are a mystery, but one translation of Moro Cojo is Crippled
Dark Horse, perhaps because the early Spanish horses also got
stuck in its mud.) In recent years it hasn’t been farmed,
just disked for weed control.
As marginal farmland, industrialization seemed to be its future.
In the 1940s the Moss Landing Harbor entrance, the Moss Landing
Power Plant, and the Kaiser Refractories Plant were built. In
1965 an oil refinery was proposed, igniting a battle over the
industrialization of both Moro Cojo and Elkhorn Slough. Proposals
included a nuclear power plant, a yacht harbor, hundreds of
condos, and a Highway One bypass. The struggle against this
vision of Elkhorn Slough and Moro Cojo led to a string of conservation
measures, including the creation of the Elkhorn Slough Reserve
and the Elkhorn Slough Foundation.
In 1998 the Elkhorn Slough Foundation acquired the proposed
site of the oil refinery. During the past five years ESF has
worked on restoring wetland functions on this land in partnership
with Doctors John Oliver and Rob Burton and their colleagues
at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. These efforts have
revealed a great deal about effective ways to return habitat
and wetland functions – and served as a laboratory for
the work ahead on the recently acquired property.
This
rare variety of Owl's Clover is found in only
a few locations along the Central Coast; one of them
is on ESF lands in Moro Cojo.
At
its most basic, restoring wetland functions is a matter of adding
water. During the past five years, drainage ditches have been
decommissioned and ponds created using recycled irrigation water
from nearby farms and the regional water treatment plant. Wetlands
biologically convert or transform nutrients and chemicals in
the water, so they are more easily disposed of. The end result
is a reduction in chemicals flowing off the land and into the
harbor and bay.
The first order of business on the newly acquired land is one
we have been dealing with for years – weed control. We
have used several approaches in Moro Cojo. One involves extensive
mowing of non-natives, which gives natives a chance to establish
themselves. Another is ponding water on the edge of adjacent
farm fields, which also creates barriers to the pests that can
do significant damage to crops. This type of approach illustrates
the commitment of ESF and its partners to doing restoration
in a working landscape – one where we find ways to restore
wetlands and help neighboring farmers. As a result of these
and other efforts, about 20 acres on Moro Cojo are now dominated
by native plants.
The
view east from the Catellus property ESF has owned since 1998
to
the Sea Mist property we acquired in late 2003.
The
restored wetlands will reduce sediment and agricultural chemical
runoff into the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The
restored lands will also help trap fresh water and thus maximize
seepage into over-drafted aquifers. Most visibly, the restored
lands will provide a wetland habitat for birds and other animals.
You can already see the difference, as birds return to the lands
ESF has managed since 1998. More than a hundred species are
already using ESF lands in Moro Cojo, including egrets, hawks,
kites, Caspian Terns, Black-necked Stilts, and White-faced Ibises.
Winter has brought an abundance of Canada Geese, as well as
Snow Geese, Ross’s Geese, and Greater White-fronted Geese.
Converging interests
ESF Executive Director Mark Silberstein uses the term “convergence
of interests” to describe ESF’s latest acquisition.
The 183 acres were purchased from Hugo Tottino and his partners.
Tottino is one of the principals of Sea Mist Farms, the largest
artichoke grower in California. “It was in everyone’s
interest to do this,” Silberstein says. It’s in the
farmers’ interest because they converted unproductive farm
land into working capital. For ESF this acquisition is something
exceedingly rare: the opportunity to restore dwindling coastal
wetlands. In the past 200 years, over 90 percent of California’s
wetlands have been lost, and it is a rare day when some are
added back.
In
the past 200 years, more than
90 percent of California’s
coastal wetlands have been lost,
and it is a rare day when some
are added back.
The
183 acres cost $887,000, plus $26,000 in transaction costs,
and $30,000 for restoration planning. The Elkhorn Slough Foundation
obtained funding for the project from the Regional Water Quality
Control Board, the California Coastal Conservancy, which committed
grant funds from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Packard
Foundation. The Regional Water Quality Control Board funding
comes from a $7 million mitigation fund established when the
Moss Landing Power Plant was expanded in 2001.
Restoration of the property will be carried out by the Elkhorn
Slough Foundation in partnership with the Moss Landing Marine
Laboratories, the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research
Reserve, and the Watershed Institute at California State University
Monterey Bay. A committee of distinguished scientists, farmers
and landowners will advise ESF on the restoration and management
of the property.
Table
of Contents
Kim's
$100,000 month
A
few weeks
into December, it became clear that Land Manager Kim Hayes was
spending a lot of money. Heavy equipment was rolling. Tons of
rock and hundreds of straw bales were being delivered. Work
was happening at a lot of places all at once. We asked Kim about
it one day, on one of her rare visits to the office, and she
rattled off some numbers on the costs of all this work. They
added up to nearly $100,000, including the time of Kim and Assistant
Land Manager Ken Collins. That’s when we started talking
about Kim’s $100,000 month.
What did we spend all that money on in December, and why? It’s
the water. Specifically, it’s keeping the water on the
land and keeping the sediment out of the slough. Regular readers
of this newsletter will know that chemical-bearing sediment
eroding from steep farm fields “is the cause of one of
the most serious stresses to the Elkhorn Slough ecosystem,”
according to the Watershed Conservation Plan that guides our
work. We’re spending a lot of our budget to control that
runoff and thus reduce this threat to the slough.
Land
Manager Kim Hayes in one of three new sediment basins on Hambey.
The
biggest chunk of that money was spent at the Hambey Ranch, which
we acquired last year. It
was ESF’s first major work on the property and it was urgently
needed. “We had to mobilize quickly,” says ESF Executive
Director Mark Silberstein, “to prevent imminent ecological
damage.” Silberstein says, “The upfront cost when
we first acquire property can sometimes be the greatest cost,”
because we are dealing with degraded lands that need major work.
He calls this the first stage of restoration: the clean-up and
stabilization of gullies and abandoned fields.
At Hambey, the stage-one work involved reconstructing three
sediment basins and 600 feet of drainage channels, which march
gently downhill from the 30 acres of farm fields. The heavy
equipment dug the basins and channels. Various work crews lined
the channels with straw matting to reduce erosion and planted
them with grass for future erosion control.
The idea is that the basins catch the water, letting the sediment
settle and some water percolate into the ground, then send the
rest of the water down the system at a slower rate. After the
water clears the last basin, it flows into the drainage channel
that runs along San Miguel Canyon Road, and from there into
Carneros Creek, which supplies 70 percent of Elkhorn Slough’s
fresh water. The goal is for this water to be free of sediment.
The construction plan below shows the sediment basins and the
connecting channels at the base of the strawberry fields on
Hambey Ranch.
This may sound complicated enough, but it’s only part of
the picture. Getting the water to the sediment basins is no
simple task either, channeling water being something like herding
cats. The photo below the construction plan shows one approach
at the Elzas Ranch farmed by Jesus Calvillo. The plastic ditch
drains the rows of strawberries, feeding into a series of sediment
basins and larger ditches, lined by plastic and/or straw.
This
plan for the three sediment basins on Hambey is superimposed
over an aerial photo. Click here
to view a larger image in a new window.
ESF
used 1700 bales of rice straw during Kim’s $100,000 month
(costing about $5000). We use rice straw because it contains
fewer seeds from weeds than other straws. We spread it on almost
all our properties with past or present farming and on thousands
of feet of farm roads.
Straw helps prevent old farm roads from turning into gullies,
which act like freeways for water runoff, quickly overwhelming
sediment basins and dramatically increasing erosion.
Kim is also working, for the second year, with Bryan Largay,
a hydrologist with the Resource Conservation District under
contract with ESF. They’re developing comprehensive erosion
control plans for all our upper slough ranches. “We’re
looking at long-term sustainable farming practices,” Kim
says, “that bring in revenue and are also good for the
environment."
Kim knows
what can happen because she’s seen it. She remembers how
it looked before and she knows how it would look if these simple
but expensive steps had not been taken. Kim looks at a peaceful
straw road and also sees the truck-swallowing gully on another
ranch. Her vision is not just before and after, but also now
and future.
Plastic-lined
ditches at Elzas channel
water from fields to sediment basins.
She
has both restoration and prevention in mind at Hambey, where
hundreds of bales of straw were spread in areas that had been
badly eroded by years of off-road motorcycle use. Touring the
area in mid-January, we saw no new motorcycle ruts and speculated
that an unadvertised benefit of straw might be to discourage
motorcyclists. It covers up deep and dangerous ruts and provides
poor traction – and lets trespassers know we are here and
we care.
Does it work?
We won’t know until later if straw discourages motorcyclists,
but we can already tell that the sediment basins and channels
help keep sediment on the land. In December, just after the
work was completed, the area was hit with a “five year
storm event” – a storm so severe you expect one like
it only every five years. The sediment basins filled, water
flowed down the drainage channels, and when it was all over,
many tons of sediment were kept on the land and out of the slough.
Water being water, some of it did what wasn’t expected,
so there are some repairs that need to be made. Still, Kim was
pleased. “Some of the worst water quality readings in the
area are on San Miguel Canyon Road,” she says. “At
the peak of the storm, I drove around the watershed and saw
lots of brown water pouring off the land, but not at Hambey.
The proof that we kept it on the land was the mountains of sediment
in the basins.” In the dry season, more than 30 tons of
sediment will be removed from the sediment basins and returned
upland, always with the goal of finding ways to keep it from
moving downhill again.
This
is Kim’s second winter as Land Manager at ESF, and she
can now look back at last year’s work and see the results.
On the Elzas Ranch she points proudly to the native bunch grasses,
Yarrow, and Mugwort coming in where a massive regrading project
was completed last year. Looking ahead, she says the plan is
to create a wetland adjoining the creek.
The
fields of Blohm Ranch have been planted
in perennial herbs, which reduces runoff.
Looking
back to last winter’s other big project – rebuilding
sediment basins at Blohm Ranch – Kim sees “complete
success.” Basins and channels are functioning well, creek
beds and ponds are healthier, and clean water is flowing beneath
Elkhorn Road into a pond at Azevedo. It is the result of ten
years of stewardship, a great and ongoing environmental success
story. Ten years ago the runoff from the fields went directly
into the slough. Today it is a model for what we’re doing
on Hambey, at Elzas, on all our lands.
In January and February, Kim and Assistant Land Manager Ken
Collins turned their attention to a later stage of restoration
– planting native plants in areas we have already cleaned
up. Working with a growing group of volunteers, they planted
more than 2000 native plants, including coast sage brush, blue
wild rye, and tufted hair grass. Most of the planting was at
Azevedo, Hambey, and El Chamisal ranches. At El Chamisal we’re
putting maritime chaparral plants in an area where we removed
invasive pampas grass last year. The seeds we’re using
at El Chamisal came from healthy areas of Blohm Ranch, where
we’ve worked for more than a decade. And so it goes, year
after year, success building on success.
