Downstream Delay?


The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board has been reluctant to issue the creek authority a permit for the flood-control project, claiming that the reconfigured channels could imperil or disturb endangered Baylands species such as the clapper rail and the salt marsh harvest mouse.

"This agency has significant concerns with the SFCJPA's current design for the flood control project, and it is possible that the design in the SFCJPA's current application will not be approved by this agency," Dale Bowyer, section leader from the water board's Watershed Division wrote on Jan. 16.

"Approving the current design proposal for the Golf Course Project would have the unfortunate effect of foreclosing potential options for improving the SFCJPA's flood control design.

"Bower cited the "significant overlap" between the two projects and maintained that applying the the two projects separately "may constitute piecemealing of the two projects' impacts to San Francisquito Creek and adjacent habitat for listed species in the Faber Tract in East Palo Alto," referring to a Baylands site that is home to both the clapper rail and harvest mouse.

All text above excerpted from Gennady Sheyner's / Palo Alto Weekly story: Palo Alto City Council gives environmental clearance to $9.5 million project

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