Diane Beck
North Group Conservation Co-Chair

Motor Vehicles on Clam Beach?

Humboldt County is on its way to producing a new,comprehensive Management Plan (MP) for Clam and Moonstone beaches. At a public meeting at Azalea Hall in McKinleyville on May 3, 2004, the county presented Proposed Ordinance Changes that should go a long way toward mitigating conflicts between beach users.

Twenty-one tent camping sites are planned adjacent to the southern parking lot, a much needed improvement. Dogs must be leashed at all times until they hit the waveslope but then can run free, though they still must be "under complete control by owner." They must stay clear of the symbolic fenced snowy plover nesting area. There are plans for a paved bike path, which will be separated from a single-lane one-way paved road (northbound).

The MP proposes that "beach driving should be prohibited from March 1st to September 30th, except to those who have a permit and except during special events, such as seasonal low tide clamming. County Parks should grant permits for commercial fishing, and for senior and handicapped visitors."

The biologists who monitor the threatened western snowy plovers on Clam Beach informed the Dunes Forum in June that a few "clammers" have driven rightup to the "symbolic fencing" around the plover nesting area to blow horns and yell. Others have dumped garbage, which attracts crows, ravens and other birds that regard plovers as prey. It is reasonable to ask why clammers are allowed to drive on the beach at all.

The county is legally obligated to manage Clam Beach for the recovery of the imperiled western snowy plover. In 2002 the fledge rate for plovers on Clam was 12 percent, and the rate was little better in 2003. In other words, it can be reasonably inferred that up to now the county has been, in effect, "managing" for extinction. It is regrettable that the county seems to allow itself to be yanked around by a few in the face of its legal (and moral) obligations.

Vehicle drivers know they are not allowed to continue on south to drive on Mad River Beach but regularly do so. They even cross Little River to drive on Moonstone Beach. And some miscreants have hitched trucks up to plover exclosures, which have been erected by plover monitors to protect nesting plovers outside the symbolically fenced area, and dragged them off the nests. Others have cut holes in the netting of the exclosures, allowing predation by other birds.

The Road that Will Not Be Built

The City of Eureka's senior staff have been stalling for years over the resource enhancement of Eureka/Palco Marsh, located on Humboldt Bay between the Bayshore Mall and Del Norte Street. The Grant Deed between the Pacific Lumber Company and the City was signed on December 30, 1985. The California Coastal Conservancy provided the funding for the property and for its enhancement and signed a conservation easement with the City entitled "Irrevocable Offer to Dedicate Easement for Resource Enhancement and Open Space Conservation."

But City staff want to build a road through the wetlands,an extension of Waterfront Drive from Del Norte Street to Hilfiker, which they didn't figure out until about ten years after the conservation easement was signed. So the Enhancement Plan languishes.

Nineteen years later, we have a few improvements; but of the two-phase project, we are now on Phase I-A.

The plan for Phase l-A was sent to the Coastal Conservancy in mid-June. We haven't seen it but wonder if it includes the planned road. What the Conservancy had in mind in 1985 with the conservation easement were trails, not roads.

The City seems to be in a state of extreme denial and forgetfulness. In a response to a letter to the California Transportation Commission (written by EPIC and signed onto by the North Group Sierra Club, the Northcoast Environmental Center, and others), the Eureka City Manager stated: "EPIC's statement that the City acquired Palco Marsh as mitigation for development of the Bayshore Mall is a misstatement of fact. The acquisition of Palco Marsh had absolutely nothing to do with the Bayshore Mall." However, consider the words in the Final Environmental Impact Report for the Bayshore Mall (November 1984):

4.2.1.2 Proposed Mitigation Measures:
The elimination of wetland areas on the proposed site due to development should be mitigated by the preparation and implementation of a wetland restoration plan. The Draft Eureka Local Coastal Program calls for restoration of the South Broadway and PALCO wetland areas."

4.2.2.2 Proposed Mitigation Measures:
"The wetland restoration plan proposed in Section 4.2.1.2 will provide for replacement of wildlife values lost as a result of the project and for protection of existing wildlife habitats in the vicinity of the site."