Brentwood Press - Index

Brentwood Press - OakleyPress_08.22.08 - Index

August 22, 2008 COMMUNITY breNTwOOdpress.COM | 21A
Speeders from page 1A
implement them quickly and effectively in
the neighborhoods.”
He said traffic calming by restriping
Covered Wagon Drive near O’Hara Avenue
has been effective in getting drivers
to slow down.
Council members praised the new
program.
“Very good job. This is a wonderful
document,” said Councilwoman Pat Anderson.
“I was surprised to see that our
road widths are on the high end. I didn’t
realize we had wider roads than most cities.
I guess that accounts for some of the
Concerns from page 1A
make it have less mercury or more mercury. But none of the
tidal marshes have produced toxic levels of methyl mercury.
They do produce some but not nearly as much as flood
plains do.”
Nix replied, “Well, some poison may not be good.”
“It’s definitely a very difficult problem,” acknowledged
Quickert. “We at the Department of Water Resources are
being told from many different directions that we need to do
these tidal marsh projects because the pumps are having impacts
to Delta smelt and other species and we need to improve
the ecosystem. Tidal marsh restoration is kind of the best hope
for ecosystem improvement.
“But you’re right: the mercury is an issue. It’s like so many
things in life. It’s like you get one thing and have to give up
something else.”
There are three separate parcels – once belonging to the
Emerson, Gilbert and Burroughs families – that will be converted
to marshland one at a time.
Councilwoman Carol Rios asked Quickert, “As you’re
doing the project and find there is a problem with methyl mer-
traffic issues we are seeing.”
Mayor Bruce Connelley also praised
the program, calling it an “awesome job,”
but questioned whether it should be optional
for city staff to hold a neighborhood
meeting before putting in traffic
calming measures in each neighborhood.
“If it’s something more than a stop
sign, you should reach out to the neighborhood
to let them know what you’re
doing,” said Connelley. “If there’s 30 people
(in the neighborhood) and 10 have a
problem and the other 20 don’t, we might
spin our wheels and find out the rest of
the neighborhood doesn’t care.”
Vogan argued in favor of keeping the
meetings optional because often there are
quick fixes that can be made that might
not require a neighborhood meeting.
“A lot of times traffic engineering is
not a science; it’s an art and evolves continually,”
he said. “A lot of times we can
go out there and make quick signage and
striping fixes and bring it up to where
it should be. It would be a waste of the
neighborhood’s time to say we will look
to make it look the way it should be in the
first place.
“I’m a fan of neighborhood meetings.
I just think that sometimes that
cury, how would you correct it? Once you breach, there’s no
going back? If you found it really is a problem, how would you
deal with that?
“We will do a phased approach,” replied Quickert. “If we
breach one parcel and there’s a problem, we would probably
do something different with the other parcels. But you’re right:
once it’s breached, you can’t do a whole lot.”
Nix is also concerned about saltier water pouring into the
Delta when the levee is breached, “which would, of course, impact
our water intake.”
Quickert responded, “Right, because you’re opening up
a whole new volume that will essentially, to use a really crass
term, suck water from the Bay, because that’s the larger volume
of water. I’ve worked with an engineer at DWR that has done
a lot of this kind of modeling. What his modeling has shown is
that at this location, it should not have an appreciable increase
in salinity.
“We have studies that show the numbers. It actually decreases
the salinity at some tidal stations. It increases it like a
hundredth of a part per thousand. So it’s negligible. So we are
not expecting that to be an appreciable effect, but it’s one of the
initial meeting would be a waste. As we
get beyond those minor, commonplace
improvements, we do need to convene the
meetings and move forward that way.”
Anderson agreed, saying that a lot
of people were cutting through her street
and going very fast until restriping was
done to make a turn look sharper than
it had been, which has slowed down traffic.
“There may be a very simple way to
solve it and we didn’t need a meeting,” she
said.
If you have a traffic problem on your
street, drop by City Hall and pick up a request
form.
things we will be monitoring.”
There will also be an increase in carbon in the water when
the nutrients in the marsh break down. “That will be an issue
that we will monitor prior to doing the restoration and after
the restoration is done to manage the amount of carbon that’s
going in the water,” said Quickert.
An environmental impact report scheduled to be released
in the next month or two will provide more detail on the potential
impacts of the project and the mitigation measures that
could be taken to minimize those impacts.
In order to create an appropriate land level for the marsh,
about a half-million cubic yards of dirt that have been irrigated
with secondary effluent from the Ironhouse Sanitary District
will be hauled across Marsh Creek to the Dutch Slough project
area.
The Burroughs parcel on the east will probably be converted
last to marshland, if at all, because a levee would need
to be built along Jersey Island Road to prevent flooding of the
road and the planned developments to the east. DWR currently
does not have the several million dollars it will take to
build that levee.