Brentwood Press - Index

Brentwood Press - OakleyPress_08.22.08 - Index

Tired of cars speeding down the street past
your house? Sick of too much traffic using your
street as a shortcut that it was never designed for?
Who you gonna call? Speed busters – also known
as the folks at Oakley City Hall in charge of the
new Neighborhood Traffic Management Program.
The plan was adopted last week by the City
Council, allowing more than $100,000 to be
spent in the coming year to help slow traffic on
neighborhood streets that are currently unsafe
for children and other living things.
“City staff receives complaints on a regular
basis that cars are being driven through neighborhoods
in a manner not compatible with the
quality of life that is expected,” wrote City Engineer
Jason Vogan in a staff report. “Issues range
from excessive speeding, too high of a volume or
people using streets as shortcuts, to name a few.”
The traffic calming measures might be as
simple as putting up signs or restriping the lanes
to make them narrower to more involved measures
such as putting in speed bumps, lumps,
cushions, tables, raised crosswalks, neckdowns,
chokers and bulbouts to major projects such as
creating traffic circles and roundabouts. New
housing developments will be required to incorporate
traffic calming mechanisms at no cost to
your hometown weeKLy newspaper
Vol. 8, No. 34 Including surrounding Communities www.oakleypress.com August 22, 2008
City to put brakes on speeders
by Dave Roberts
Staff Writer
the city.
In a workshop meeting last December, the
council OK’d those measures but turned thumbs
down on more extreme measures, such as instituting
public traffic classes, pedestrian sting operations,
juvenile traffic school programs and residential
speed watch programs. They also want
the slowing measures to be used only on neighborhood
streets, not on main thoroughfares.
At the Aug. 12 council meeting, Vogan presented
a 100-page traffic consultant’s report that
details the new program. It requires residents to
fill out a request form specifying the problem and
providing the signatures of 10 neighbors who are
also concerned. City staff will then collect traffic
data, rank the various requests, develop a traffic
calming plan, hold a neighborhood meeting if
necessary, then implement the plan and monitor
it to see if it’s effective.
“The goal was not to create a bureaucratic
program,” Vogan told the council. “We wanted a
phased approach that allows us to take steps and
see.Speeders.page.21A
Speed
bumps like
those on
Walnut
Meadows
Drive
might
become
more common
in
Oakley.
Photo.by..
Dave.Roberts
Concerns surface over marsh project
by Dave Roberts
Staff Writer
A plan to convert the old Emerson
dairy and nearby properties
into a tidal marsh might become
a vital step in saving endangered
Delta fish and would provide a large
waterfront park, but it also has the
potential to increase salinity, carbon
and toxic mercury in local drinking
water.
That was the mixed news in a
report to the Oakley City Council
last week by Patty Quickert, who is
heading up the Dutch Slough Restoration
Project for the California
Department of Water Resources
(DWR).
Council members are looking
forward to the 65-acre park
with trails along the Delta, ball
fields, boat launching and other
recreation. But they are concerned
about the potential mercury toxicity
that could result from breaching
the levee and flooding much of the
1,166-acre property south of Dutch
Slough between Big Break and Jersey
Island Road.
“ We will do a phased approach. If we
breach one parcel and there’s a problem, we
would probably do something different with
the other parcels.
”
Patty Quickert,
California Department of Water Resources
“As you all probably know,
there’s a great deal of mercury in
the Delta system,” Quickert told
the council on Aug. 12. “It washed
downstream during the Gold Rush.
And it comes from the mines in the
area that are leeching it to the system.
“Most of that mercury is elemental
mercury – it’s fairly inert.
Mercury is mostly harmful to people
when you breathe the gas, like
when you break a fluorescent tube.
That’s mercury vapor, and it’s really
harmful. Most of the mercury that’s
in the sediments of the Delta is not
harmful in the state that it’s in.
“However, when you have a
tidal marsh project, an area that is
under water, the mercury in the sediments
can react with bacteria and it
can form methyl mercury, which
can be toxic. That’s when you hear
these warnings about eating fish
– it’s because the fish contains mercury,
and when you eat the fish the
mercury stays in your body and can
be potentially toxic.
“The Dutch Slough area has
actually one of the lowest levels of
mercury in the Delta area. We don’t
know how the tidal marsh will affect
the methylation and the potential
toxicity of the mercury. Tidal
marshes do export methyl mercury.
“But in some cases they are
also known to decrease the amount
of mercury. Because not only do
bacteria create the methyl mercury
but other bacteria can break
it down back into mercury. This is
something that we will be monitoring
very closely to see how much
mercury is being exported from the
site.”
Councilman Brad Nix said
that after the council approved the
Dutch Slough project several years
ago, scientists expressed concerns
“about how serious the mercury
problem was with this type of restoration.
We’ve been sort of waiting
for somebody to come back to
us and tell us that the problem has
been solved here and a consensus
reached. Are the … scientists now
on board saying it’s OK and it’s
safe?”
Quickert responded, “The
most recent research shows that
tidal marshes are not a primary
producer of methyl mercury. Some
tidal marshes actually reduce the
amount of mercury. There are studies
being done to try to figure out
what aspects of the different areas
see.Concerns.page.21A
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