The Sea Level Rise Solution that is as Charismatic as Mud (the re-post)

The following  was published Feb. 17, 2017, on the WWF ClimatePrep blog (climateprep.org) -- which appears to have gone defunct. See my blog post about the writing of this article here.

Photo by Agnali. CC0/Pixabay License.

This past fall, when soon-to-be President Trump used “drain the swamp”  as an anti-corruption rallying cry, some biologists and wetlands advocates pointed out that swamps are actually quite useful. Also called wetlands, swamps can be a critical part of natural infrastructure for the purposes of protecting the shoreline from storm surge and sea level rise, in addition to providing habitat and improving water quality.

Sediment, matter that settles to the bottom of a body of water, nourishes wetlands. Sediment, literally as charismatic as mud, is not given the same attention as a natural resource as fresh water or plant life. It is not photogenic. It is out of sight and out of mind. It is a waste product, an impediment to shipping traffic. But in areas where wetlands have been identified as strategically valuable in the defense against rising sea levels, sediment’s star is rising.

One of these areas is the San Francisco Bay, where sea level has been measured as rising steadily since its first tide gauge was installed in 1854. Numerous wetlands restoration projects are underway to help protect the bay shoreline, and sediment is in demand to nourish them. Right now, there is a shrinking supply of sediment in the SF Bay. According to Bodega Marine Laboratory oceanographer Doug George, the primary culprit is dams trapping sediment, but also the petering out of the large pulse of sediment that came with placer gold mining during the Gold Rush, and current sand mining practices. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACE), responsible for dredging to maintain channel depths for ship navigation at U.S. harbors, is dumping dredged materials from the bottom of the bay—useful but uncharismatic mud—outside the Golden Gate Bridge. ACE is bound by federal statute to do the least-cost disposal method, and it costs more to reuse sediment for wetlands.

A Lawsuit over Mud

Some of the dredged material is being redistributed to nourish bayside wetlands, but not enough. A 1998 environmental impact statement (see the Long Term Management Strategy [LTMS] for the Placement of Dredged Material in the San Francisco Bay Region) indicates that 40% of that dredged material should be put to “beneficial reuse,” including wetlands nourishment. However, in 2016 ACE allocated less than 40% of its dredged materials to reuse. According to the Bay Conservation and Development Commission  (BCDC) Executive Director, Larry Goldzband, and Sediment Program Manager, Brenda Goeden, other dredgers in the bay are keeping up with the 40% reuse policy, but ACE, the largest dredger, has been falling short.

BCDC, formed in 1965 in response to heavy shoreline development on the SF Bay, is the agency tasked with keeping the bay from shrinking in size. So, in theory, it would be all in on dredging. However, BCDC is concerned about the bay’s landward-shifting shoreline. It was one of the first government agencies in the U.S. to issue guidelines responding to sea level rise. Its staff report, Living with a Rising Bay (2011), informed SF Bay Plan revisions, including the assertion that “[a]n adequate supply of sediment is necessary to ensure resilience of the Bay ecosystem as sea level rise accelerates.”

ACE has worked closely with BCDC for years on the question of sediment management in the SF Bay.  ACE carries out its responsibility regarding navigation channels in compliance with the Coastal Zone Management Act which gives BCDC its accreditation. BCDC reviews ACE practices and determines whether they are consistent with that federal act. Now, BCDC, chafing under the shortfall in beneficially reused sediment, on Sept. 22, 2016, filed a lawsuit against ACE to force it to stop dumping good mud. While ACE falls back on the federal requirement of using a least cost disposal method as a rationale for its shortfall, the lawsuit focuses on the full language of the regulation, which dictates that the disposal method be “environmentally acceptable” (per L. Goldzband). The lawsuit was filed after months of discussions and attempts at mediation. In late March 2017 representatives of ACE and BCDC will attend an “Alternative Dispute Resolution,” a last-ditch attempt to avoid the courts.

A SF Bay Wetlands Restoration Project Roll Call

There are many pilot projects involving sediment in various stages of development in the SF Bay.

Bel Marin Keys/ Hamilton Airfield

This ACE/ California Coastal Conservancy project is celebrated as a successful transformation of a military site into a wetland. Click here to see a 1:38 video with images of the breaching of the levee, opening the land to the SF Bay waters in 2014. This project benefited from beneficially reused sediment.

Oro Loma Horizontal Levee Project

This, the first horizontal levee in the SF Bay, using vegetation on a slope to slow waves rather than a vertical wall, was set to be fully operational in 2016. It might be the first levee of its kind in the world. After more than four years in the permitting process it took six months to build (per Nate Kauffman in Save the Bay, 2016).

Cullinan Ranch

This project in the North Bay, now near completion in the Napa River Delta, came out of a movement to block fill and residential development on the former wetlands. Read about its return to recreational use in “Into the Breach: Paddlers and Ducks Return to Cullinan Ranch” (2016).

South Bay Salt Ponds

This is “the largest tidal wetland restoration project on the West Coast.” It is fully underway, and will convert 15,100 acres of commercial salt ponds at the south end of SF Bay into mud flats and tidal marsh. It will rely mostly on natural sedimentation processes rather than reused dredged material.

Montezuma Wetlands Restoration Project (Suisun Marsh)

Now completed, this is an interesting project because it used “slightly more chemically challenged” dredged material than what is usually used in restoration projects: it is designed to safely make beneficial reuse of material that otherwise would be dumped in the open ocean. Scroll to the bottom of this page for a brief description of this project by the SF Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. A 3-page description of the project written during its initial stages.

Living Shorelines

This subtidal restoration demonstration project in San Rafael and Hayward was begun in 2012, is ongoing and now expanding to a new location in Richmond, California. It focuses on eelgrass and oyster habitat restoration.

Bothin Marsh

This project is intended to enhance Bothin Marsh for habitat and sea level rise protection through beneficial reuse of dredge sediment from Coyote Creek. Although Marin County has received a grant to develop a feasibility assessment, it remains in the conceptual design stage.

Sediment self-distribution in the South Bay?

A 2014 study (Bever et al.) showed through modeling that dredged material dumped south of the southern-most bridge across the SF Bay (Dumbarton) could result in the nourishment of “mudflats, marshes and breached salt ponds through natural sediment redistribution.” Any actual experiments with this kind of dumping would have to wait for BCDC to change its bay fill policy.

What’s Next for the SF Bay?

There’s no time to lose

While BCDC and ACE are locked in a legal battle, the Pacific climate cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has shifted as of the beginning of 2014 according to NOAA Fisheries: the switch brings a wind pattern that warms surface waters, causing seas near the West Coast to expand and rise according to NASA (2015). It may bring a rapid increase in sea level rise, and one NASA climate scientist, Josh Willis, says “we could be in for wild ride over the next 20 years or so.”  

Funding is on the horizon

In 2016 the SF Bay Area passed Measure AA, providing the first funding for the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority. While a good first step to sustained sea level rise preparation, the funding falls far short of the need. There is some hope (according to L. Goldzband of BCDC) that Measure AA funds could be augmented by the 2016 Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act (WIIN Act), which includes the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), providing funding for 10 pilot projects to maximize beneficial reuse of sediment. These projects would not be subject to the “least cost” regulation that currently poses a barrier to beneficial reuse. ACE should announce the locations of these projects by mid-March 2017.

Sedi-Match!

In 2013 BCDC facilitated “speed dating” sessions between dredgers and restoration project managers to see where dredged material could be beneficially reused. This turned into the development of a simple online tool called Sedi-Match. It was scheduled for release in January 2017. Read more about its development.

Rethinking fill policy

BCDC is about to launch a series of public meetings to discuss whether the agency should change its bay fill policy to prepare for sea level rise. If you are local to the SF Bay, you can attend these meetings beginning on April 20, 2017, from 1-4 PM at 375 Beale St., San Francisco.

Resilient by Design

This competition—aimed at “design[ing] solutions that protect the bayshore and mak[ing] us more resilient”—received a $4.6 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation on January 31, 2017, and should be ready to roll in April 2017. It is modeled after the “Rebuild by Design” Hurricane Sandy Design Competition.

More reading

See the full text of the Sept. 22, 2016, lawsuit filed by California Attorney General Kamala Harris on behalf of BCDC against Army Corps of Engineers.

Rising Reality, Part 4: The Shorelines (“Battle on Many Fronts”) – a November 2016 article by the SF Chronicle’s John King from a series on the SF Bay’s sea level rise problem.

The Columbia River Treaty - A Watery Snarl

The 53 year-old Columbia River Treaty (CRT), dictating terms of water management for the U.S. and Canada across the Columbia River Basin, is up for renegotiation. So far things are proceeding slowly, with formal negotiations only initiated on the U.S. side thus far. Here's a quick brief on the treaty, its main issues, and what has happened so far in negotiations to read while everyone is waiting for the Canadian side to come to the table.

If you work on salmon ecosystems or the impacts of hydropower (environmental, energy, climate change, etc.) and this treaty hasn't been on your radar, I recommend you read on: the CRT has water and ecosystem management, GHG emissions, and power supply implications for the entire U.S. Pacific Northwest.

(Scroll to the bottom for a fascinating historical side-note about how Woody Guthrie took a temp job as a shill for hydropower in the Columbia River Basin in 1941.)

Image from Northwest Division U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2017) Source

The Basics 

The treaty was ratified in September 1964 and has no expiration date. However, the treaty provides that parties can terminate the agreement in 2024 (though no earlier than September 16, 2024). If termination is desired, that action requires a 10-year advance notice. As of 2017 neither side has given notice of intent to terminate, though parties on both sides are urging their governments to do so, if only to motivate the other side to move towards modernization of the treaty. Outright termination would be bad for both sides, but politics might require threatening gestures. The likeliest outcome is there will be a modernization of the treaty. But will this modernization only change the terms of U.S. payments to Canada for help with flood control, or will other factors be given consideration?

Places to read more on the CRT basics:

• Wikipedia article on the Columbia River Treaty- appears updated to ~2013-2014.
• "Columbia River Treaty: Review of landmark deal could have big implications for county: Pact between Canada, U.S. manages flood control, power" - 2013, by Eric Florip for The Columbian.
• The Columbia Basin Trust's CRT summary - including a timeline updated to 2014.
• U.S. Congressional Research Service report: "Columbia River Treaty Review" - Dec. 5, 2016, 17 pages.

What are the main concerns with the treaty?
The most hotly debated topic is whether the U.S. has been underpaying or overpaying for flood control benefits on the Canadian side of the river basin. In the worst case scenario (for ecosystem management and climate change concerns) this will be the only thing negotiated in the treaty's modernization.

In 2024 the flood control terms change to "called upon" flood control, meaning that the agreement providing U.S. rental of flood storage space behind Canadian dams expires. This means the U.S. would be responsible for its own flood storage space behind its own dams, allowing the Canadian side to use its dams and reservoirs primarily (exclusively?) for power production instead of flood storage for the U.S., allowing the U.S. to "call upon" extra storage on the Canadian side only after it had carried out its own flood control measures, and then on a case-by-case basis, paying as it goes. Canadian-side treaty reservoir levels would be dictated solely according to Canadian needs for the first time since 1964.

Some of the problems this upcoming renegotiation needs to address:

• Calculating the fair value of the Canadian contribution to the system (the "Canadian Entitlement," 50% of the value of the water in hydropower that crosses the border): as noted above, the U.S. thinks it has been overpaying for the benefit from flood control and hydropower on the Canadian side of the river basin; Canada thinks the U.S. has been underpaying. 

Also:

• Climate change impacts: increasing drought (frequency, severity, and length) is causing lower hydropower output with reduced flow, greater flood risk from higher rainfall coming in shorter periods (e.g., associated with atmospheric rivers) requiring greater flood control capacity, and reduced snowpack with more precipitation coming as rain rather than snow potentially exacerbating both floods and late season drought (since the snowpack will be contributing less meltwater in the summer). The changes to the water regime also have implications for irrigation and migrating salmon.
• First Nations/ Native American cultural and environmental concerns: these were neglected in the 1964 treaty. In particular the cultural and environmental value of salmon needs to be taken into account.
• Greenhouse gas (GHG) implications of increased water storage if new dams are built: new studies are showing that hydropower, long considered a "clean" or GHG-free power source, produces significant GHGs, mostly coming from methane from rotting vegetation behind dams. 
• For more on this, check out the 2012 study by marine scientists Bridget Deemer and Maria Glavin that shows how interruption of the downstream flow of organic carbon contributes to climate change, specifically documenting a 20-fold rise in methane emissions as Washington's Lacamas Lake reservoir was drawn down.
• Other environmental concerns associated with the hydropower dams governed by the treaty, including terrestrial wildlife impacts, sediment loss downstream, and implications for recreation, transportation, and economic development.

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What Happened with CRT Negotiations Oct. 2016- Oct. 2017?

A year ago, on the doorstep of the 2016 presidential election, the U.S. took the formal steps necessary to officially begin negotiations on the CRT.

• Oct. 7, 2016: U.S. State Dept. "finalized Circular 175, authorizing talks with Canada to modernize the treaty." (Press Release U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell [D-WA], Oct. 7, 2016)

• June 21, 2017: Letter sent to President Trump from "bipartisan group of Northwest House members" urging him "to 'take any and all necessary actions' to initiate negotiations with Canada over the future of the Columbia River Treaty, including sending a notice of termination so as 'to incentivize Canada to come to the table.'" (NW Fishletter, July 3, 2017) 

• July 2017: Term ended for U.S.-side CRT negotiator (Brian Doherty). (NW Fishletter, July 3, 2017)

• August 16, 2017: New U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson talked to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the CRT. (U.S. State Dept. Press Release, Aug. 16, 2017)

• September 2017: Premier of British Columbia John Horgan met with Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, agreeing to advance negotiations toward formal engagement in the fall. (Based on e-mail from expert source, see * below.)

• "Mid-September" 2017: Jerry Rigby, legal counsel for a committee representing water storage holders in Idaho’s Upper Snake reservoirs, together with other officials representing Idaho water users met with Trump Administration officials in D.C. One source reporting on this meeting said, "Administration officials are [...] sympathetic with Idaho’s position on the proposed inclusion of 'ecosystem' considerations in the treaty, regarding minimum flows for endangered fish..." (Capital Press :"The West's Ag Website," Oct. 4, 2017)

• October 16, 2017: New U.S.-side CRT negotiator appointed: Jill Smail. (NW Fishletter, Nov. 6, 2017)
  
  From the NW Fishletter: From 2009 through September 2017, Smail served as a water advisor in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs for Environment, Science, Technology, and Health, where she negotiated transboundary water issues in the Middle East. She joined the U.S. Department of State in 2001. 
  

Read the Save Our Wild Salmon article about Smail's appointment (Oct. 27, 2017), which gives a little more about her background. (I was unable to find the announcement of her appointment on the U.S. Dept. of State website itself.)

• "Mid-October" 2017: New Canadian-side CRT negotiator appointed: Sylvan Fabi. (Trail Times, Nov. 2, 2017).
  
  Taken from coverage of Fabi's appointment as Canadian High Commissioner to Jamaica in 2015: Sylvain Fabi [...] worked in sales and marketing for pharmaceutical multinationals before joining a consulting firm specialized in small and medium-sized enterprises. He joined the Trade Commissioner Service of External Affairs and International Trade Canada in 1992 [...]. He then worked as a trade commissioner at the Canadian embassy in Moscow from 1995 to 1998. [...] From 2005 to 2009, he was senior trade commissioner and counsellor at the Canadian embassy in Santiago. [...] Since [2013], he has directed the North America Policy and Relations Division. (Source 1; Source 2)

• Nov. 2, 2017: The U.S.-based Columbia Basin Development League annual meeting was held in Moses Lake, Washington. At this meeting Washington state’s agriculture department director Derek Sandison said, "British Columbia recommended modernizing the treaty, but Canada has not yet formally engaged. [...] Signs indicate they’re prepared to engage soon. [...]." And, "[Sandison said he] expects movement on the treaty by the end of the year." (Chinook Observer, Nov. 14, 2017)

* On Oct. 3, 2017, I asked the Research Director of the Climate Adaptation Team at Simon Fraser University, Jon O'Riordan, one of the co-authors of The Columbia River Treaty: A Primer (Sanford, Harford, O'Riordan, 2014), for an update on where things stood on the Canadian side. He wrote:

"My understanding is that Premier Horgan and Minister Freeland met in September and agreed that a Cabinet Note on the Canadian mandate for the Treaty negotiations would go to Cabinet this fall. I am not aware that this has yet happened. The change in the BC Government extended the time frame for seeking Federal approvals." 

I followed up with Mr. O'Riordan on Nov. 27, 2017, to see if there was any progress, and he alerted me to Sylvain Fabi's appointment and added, "Canadian officials have drafted a mandate for the Treaty negotiations and this is to be discussed by federal cabinet in the fall."

As of this date the Canadian side has not yet formally engaged in CRT negotiations.

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Treaty Text

The Columbia Treaty: Treaty between Canada and the United States of America relating to Cooperative Development of the Water Resources of The Columbia River Basin - 62 pages, ratified Sept. 16, 1964.

Official Government Websites Pertaining to CRT Negotiations

Canadian positions:

British Columbia's official site on the CRT.

British Columbia's stakeholder engagement process in the CRT review:
Meeting materials from the Columbia Basin Regional Advisory Committee's only 2017 meeting so far (June 20-21, 2017). Includes: BC Hydro PowerPoint "Climate Change in the Columbia Basin" - by  Stephanie Smith, Manager of Hydrology, BC Hydro, presented at a Columbia Basin Regional Advisory Committee meeting, June 20, 2017, 39 pages. (See p. 22: "What does this mean for the Treaty Review?" - "Same or more water available, particularly in Canadian Columbia; Timing of runoff is changing.")

Official website of Katrine Conroy, BC's Member of the Legislative Assembly for Kootenay West, appointed in 2013 as opposition critic for the Columbia River Treaty (CRT) review. She also oversees the Columbia Basin Trust and Columbia Power.

U.S. positions:

CRT 50th Anniversary Press Release from U.S. Government (Sept. 16, 2014). It clarifies the nature of the U.S.-side CRT management entity:

"The U.S. Entity, which consists of the Administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Northwestern Division Engineer, is charged with formulating and carrying out the operating arrangements necessary to implement the Columbia River Treaty in concert with the Canadian Entity."

Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) official CRT page.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Northwestern Division official CRT page - under the Columbia Basin Water Management Division.

U.S. Government official site on the CRT - managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bonneville Power Administration (BPA).

More Useful CRT Resources

• Universities Consortium on Columbia River Governance
  - Especially this page of links
• Columbia Basin Trust
• Simon Fraser University's Adaptation to Climate Change Team (ACT) resources on the Columbia River Treaty

Educational Videos

• "Columbia Basin Treaty History" (9:15), posted in 2010 but with an unclear provenance/date, based on video quality possibly 20+ years old, and based on the narrator's text probably of Canadian origin ("the United States pays us..."). It includes the perspectives of people flooded out by CBT dams.

• 1965 BC Hydro film about the treaty (25:54)

• Columbia Basin Trust's animated history of the treaty and the trust (3:59), posted in 2016.

• The Columbia River Treaty, Climate Change, Tribal Rights and Water Scarcity (1:27:00), posted in 2015. This is a recording of a forum organized by the League of Women Voters of Seattle-King County featuring panelists  Scott Simms (Secretary to the U.S. Entity for the Columbia River Treaty), Paul Lumley (Executive Director at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission) and Rachael Paschal Osborn, (public interest water lawyer at the Center for Environmental Law and Policy). 

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An Interesting Pre-CRT Historical Moment Involving Woody Guthrie Shilling for Hydropower (!)

Roll on Columbia: Woody Guthrie and the Bonneville Power Administration (56:29) -  the story of how in 1941 Guthrie took a temp job with the BPA writing songs to promote using dams for cheap electricity. In 30 days he wrote 26 songs, the most prolific period of his career.

It's Sedimentary, My Dear

My newest blog post The Sea Level Rise Solution that is as Charismatic as Mud was published today on WWF's ClimatePrep blog, featuring interviews with Larry Goldzband and Brenda Goeden, respectively Executive Director and Sediment Program Manager at BCDC - the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, and Doug George, an oceanographer at the Bodega Marine Laboratory, with additional input from an interview with Nate Kauffman, of LEAP - the Live Edge Adaptation Project.

In the post I delve into the latest news on sediment management for sea level rise in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the hot topic of BCDC's lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (read the 2-page BCDC brief about the suit here, read the entire filing here), filed Sept. 22, 2016, by California's then-Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Here is the full list of SF Bay sediment/sea level rise-related pilot projects that appears in my WWF ClimatePrep article in truncated form:

A SF Bay Wetlands Restoration Project Roll Call

There are many pilot projects involving sediment in various stages of development in the SF Bay.

Bel Marin Keys/ Hamilton Airfield

This ACE/ California Coastal Conservancy project is celebrated as a successful transformation of a military site into a wetland. Click here to see a 1:38 video with images of the breaching of the levee, opening the land to the SF Bay waters in 2014. This project benefited from beneficially reused sediment.

Oro Loma Horizontal Levee Project

This, the first horizontal levee in the SF Bay, using vegetation on a slope to slow waves rather than a vertical wall, was set to be fully operational in 2016. It might be the first levee of its kind in the world. After more than four years in the permitting process it took six months to build (per Nate Kauffman in Save the Bay, 2016).

Cullinan Ranch

This project in the North Bay, now near completion in the Napa River Delta, came out of a movement to block fill and residential development on the former wetlands. Read about its return to recreational use in “Into the Breach: Paddlers and Ducks Return to Cullinan Ranch” (2016).

South Bay Salt Ponds

This is “the largest tidal wetland restoration project on the West Coast.” It is fully underway, and will convert 15,100 acres of commercial salt ponds at the south end of SF Bay into mud flats and tidal marsh. It will rely mostly on natural sedimentation processes rather than reused dredged material.

Montezuma Wetlands Restoration Project (Suisun Marsh)

Now completed, this is an interesting project because it used “slightly more chemically challenged” dredged material than what is usually used in restoration projects: it is designed to safely make beneficial reuse of material that otherwise would be dumped in the open ocean. Scroll to the bottom of this page for a brief description of this project by the SF Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. A 3-page description of the project written during its initial stages.

Living Shorelines

This subtidal restoration demonstration project in San Rafael and Hayward was begun in 2012, is ongoing and now expanding to a new location in Richmond, California. It focuses on eelgrass and oyster habitat restoration.

Bothin Marsh

This project is intended to enhance Bothin Marsh for habitat and sea level rise protection through beneficial reuse of dredge sediment from Coyote Creek. Although Marin County has received a grant to develop a feasibility assessment, it remains in the conceptual design stage.

Sediment self-distribution in the South Bay?

A 2014 study (Bever et al.) showed through modeling that dredged material dumped south of the southern-most bridge across the SF Bay (Dumbarton) could result in the nourishment of “mudflats, marshes and breached salt ponds through natural sediment redistribution.” Any actual experiments with this kind of dumping would have to wait for BCDC to change its bay fill policy.

-
Update: WWF's ClimatePrep blog apparently went defunct in 2018 and may not be revived.  I'm updating this blog's links to ClimatePrep to snapshots on Archive.org (where available). Some articles look OK there, some not so OK. For a readable version with images intact, see my ClimatePrep articles as reconstructed on this blog:

• Head in the Clouds: The Dream of Harvesting Water from Fog
June 08, 2017

• Story Maps: A Rising Star of Climate Change Communication
April 10, 2017

• The Sea Level Rise Solution that is as Charismatic as Mud
February 17, 2017

• The Internet of Water - October 31, 2016

• Sea Level Rise Seen with New Eyes: the OWLs of San Mateo
August 30, 2016

• California: The Rebeavering
May 22, 2015

• Government Folly in the Face of Climate Change
March 19, 2015

• In the Heat of the Moment
December 02, 2014

• California’s Adaptation Clarion Call
September 02, 2014

• Farmland in Flux
July 8, 2014

• Honest Conversations: Climate Change and Uncertainty
December 12, 2013