Clogged Petaluma River forces yacht event cancellation

An abundance of water - not the lack of it - is causing problems for boaters on the silt-choked Petaluma River, in an unusual twist that is costing the city thousands of dollars in tourism revenue.

The tidally-affected river was impacted by the heavy rains that fell on Petaluma this winter, as flooded creeks unloaded years of built up silt into the river, adding detritus to the already choked waterway. Without federal funds to dredge the river, boats literally become stuck in the mud.

A lack of river dredging has claimed another causality: the Petaluma Yacht Club’s annual Memorial Day event.

For the past 20 years, as many as 80 yachters from around the Bay Area have cruised up the river and docked in the Turning Basin. The nautical tourists dine in local restaurants, shop in downtown boutiques and spend up to $70 per person on social events at the yacht club, said Ted Adams, commodore of the Petaluma Yacht Club, who was forced to cancel this year’s event because the water is too low.

“It’s by far our biggest event,” Adams said. “It’s really a shame. A lot of boaters love to come to Petaluma. Not being able to use the river is absolutely heartbreaking.”

Adams said the tide charts showed that the Turning Basin would have only six inches of water at times during Memorial Day weekend, so low that pricey boats could become damaged. He said that the Petaluma River, which has not been dredged since emergency work in 2006, has lost up to two feet of depth in the past year due to the additional silt from winter storms.

“A lot of people are very concerned about this,” he said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has typically dredged the river every six years, but recently Congress has been unwilling to allocate funding for the program. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, sent a letter in December urging the Corps Engineers to fund the Petaluma project this year.

“I implore you to act on my highest priority project in my district: dredging the Petaluma River,” he wrote, adding that funding would “address the long overdue dredging needs that the local and extended community has been seeking for many years.”

Huffman has convened stakeholders in North Bay communities to come up with alternative ways to fund the dredging project in the longterm, including charging commercial river users a fee, having cities contribute funds and grouping the Petaluma River with other regional rivers to lower the cost of dredging.

“It’s not been business as usual,” said Dan St. John, Petaluma’s director of public works. “We’re talking about local skin in the game.”

The clogged river is affecting boats big and small. Rowers and paddlers, who use the river for exercise, recreation and sport, are becoming stuck at low tide.

A group of river enthusiasts from the Petaluma Small Craft Center, North Bay Rowing Club, He’e Nalu Hawaiian outrigger canoe club and River Town Racers last weekend demonstrated the low water level by forming a human chain across the river, which was chest-deep at the deepest point.

Greg Sabourin, executive director of PSCC, said he has never seen this much mud in the river in more than 40 years. He said that the docks used by the North Bay Rowing Club have had to be extended by 10 feet into the river to avoid the shallow muddy banks.

“You can’t run a rowing program when you don’t know if you can get out onto the water,” he said. “It has definitely gotten worse. This winter put an exclamation point on it. Now it’s critical.”