Here’s a look at the repairs to Morro Creek, which badly eroded in a storm last November. Over 30-feet of the creek bank eroded away threatening the access road to the Fishermen’s Gear Storage facility. Photo by Neil Farrell
Repairs to a badly eroded segment of Morro Creek have been completed and the local emergency is now over.
Last Nov. 18 the Public Works Department asked the City Council to declare an emergency after a winter storm eroded the southern bank of Morro Creek as it runs along the access road to the Fishermen’s Gear Storage facility.
The erosion wiped away about 25-30 feet of the creek bank along about 150 feet and threatened to undermine the access road.
Because it was done as an emergency, the Council has had to reaffirm the existence of the emergency at every meeting since November. But the declaration also allowed the City to expedite the repairs instead of the lengthy process of seeking a Coastal Development Permit from the Planning Department and Streambed Alteration Permit from State Fish & Wildlife.
“Emergency stabilization work began on Thursday, April 2,” reads a report on the job from City Engineer Nate Stong, “after obtaining necessary easements and compliance with applicable regulatory requirements.”
The City hired David Crye Construction of Morro Bay to do the work and it was completed April 10. Crye’s contract was for a base amount of $355,000.
The City also had to reach contracts with an archaeological firm to monitor the work, Native American observers, and another company to do “geotechnical support.”
The property is actually owned by Vistra and is part of the larger power plant site. The gear storage facility is leased by the City and sublet to individual commercial fishermen. The Coast Guard and Harbor Department also have storage yards there. The City and Vistra entered into an easement agreement to allow the repair work to be done.
The work entailed “removal of failed creek bank protection materials and placement of rock, root wads, and vegetation planting to stabilize creek bank,” according to the Emergency CDP.
An earthmover was used to grad materials into the large parking area adjacent to the slip out spot.
The job specs allowed for excavation down to 12-feet below the creek bed surface level and placement of rocks up to 8 tons in size. All that was covered over with fill. But of course, the work will continue.
“Termination of the emergency,” Stong said, “triggers a requirement to implement a 5-year vegetation monitoring program to be conducted by the City. This monitoring requirement is already accounted for in the existing agreement with the project biologist.”
Much of the creek bank in that area is covered in ice plant, which is considered an invasive species, but re-vegetation needs to be done with native plants.
“These activities include irrigation, weed control, replacement planting, and annual reporting to ensure success criteria are met,” Stong said. It will be interesting to see which plants win this little battle, as ice plant is extremely hardy and tough to keep from spreading.
Though the emergency status of the work allowed an expedited repair that doesn’t mean the City didn’t still have bureaucratic hoops to jump through.
“The Morro Creek Bank Stabilization Project has been coordinated with applicable regulatory agencies. Work was conducted under U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nationwide Permit 13.
“The Regional Water Quality Control Board has issued Water Quality Certification No. 34026WQ08 under the Clean Water Act Section 401, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has been notified consistent with Fish and Game Code section 1610 Emergency Work Notification requirements.”
The City also issued itself an emergency CDP on March 4, Stong said. “Now that the emergency work has been completed, the City will apply for a standard Coastal Development Permit and present it to the Planning Commission for their approval.”
That regular CDP process includes the project being appealable first to the City Council, and then the Coastal Commission, if somebody should object to the way the City handled the matter.
That process will also require the City to do the normal environmental review, likely to be a checklist resulting in a negative declaration. Should any of this red tape lead to a decision that denies the CDP, the City could be forced to remove the repair work.
However, “Because the emergency repair is limited to the low impact stabilization of a previously stabilized creek bank without any history of negative environmental or coastal resource impacts, and the repair will help protect coastal uses such as the commercial fisherman storage area and Morro Creek pedestrian bridge, no substantial CEQA or Coastal Act consistency issues are expected as part of the regular CDP and environmental review process,” reads a previous report by Public Works Director Greg Kwolek.
The City could potentially have an argument ace in the hole, as that stretch of Morro Creek is not a natural waterway. The Army Corps of Engineers created it in the 1930s when the Corps rechanneled Morro Creek away from its former meandering path through what is now the power plant property, draining a natural delta that led to a discharge point at what is now Coleman Beach. This was done to build a Naval training base that went in during World War II. When the war ended and the Navy base was taken down, Pacific Gas & Electric obtained the property and in the late 1950s started building the power plant, which was completed in the early 1960s and operated until it closed for good in 2014.
The new creek channel was lined with large rocks mined from Morro Rock, which the Army Corps was engaged in dynamiting for materials to build jetties and revetments in Morro Bay Harbor, Port San Luis and other ports up and down the state.
All told some 1 million tons of rock was blasted away from Morro Rock, with much of it being used here to form the revetment that also allowed the Army Corps to create the causeway to Morro Rock (now Coleman Drive) and the modern Embarcadero.
Active mining ended in the mid-1960s shortly after the City of Morro Bay was incorporated.
