Hopeful for river dredging coalition

After 13 years of accumulated silt building up in the Petaluma River, stranding boats and discouraging shippers and yachters from plying these waters, there is finally some potential for movement toward dredging the river.|

After 13 years of accumulated silt building up in the Petaluma River, stranding boats and discouraging shippers and yachters from plying these waters, there is finally some potential for movement toward dredging the river.

The action is the culmination of a year of meetings between several regional governments all in the same marooned boat, including San Rafael, Napa and Vallejo.

For decades, the Petaluma River and other nearby waterways were dredged by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But Congress has shirked this responsibility, and the Petaluma River, once on a four- to six-year dredging cycle, has been neglected since 2003. That’s not been for a lack of effort on the part of Petaluma’s Congressman. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, has pushed for federal funding for the Petaluma River and San Rafael Creek since his election to Congress in 2012.

Huffman and Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, convened the meetings of local municipalities, which also included the Corps of Engineers and other river stakeholders.

The result is a partnership involving Petaluma, the lead agency, and other governments and river users. In these times of budgetary uncertainty, this partnership could allow the Corps of Engineers to save costs and maximize efficiencies in its regional dredging program.

Combining all of the North Bay’s waterways into a single dredging contract would create economies of scale. The projects will be able to achieve additional cost savings by pooling resources to off-haul dredging material to a single site in the bay.

While good news for boaters, dredging the river provides a number of indirect benefits to the non-aquatic residents of Petaluma. In the city known as Rivertown, the waterway has always played a major role in the economy.

Commercial shippers still ply the river, hauling more than $1 million of materials annually to and from the greater Bay Area. Those materials, if transported by land, would add hundreds of truck trips to Highway 101, increasing traffic and air pollution.

For Bay Area boat owners, Petaluma has become a port of call, a tourist destination with shops and restaurants in close proximity to the docks of the turning basin. But the shallow, silted waters of the Petaluma River have made many owners of expensive yachts think twice about venturing here, lest they become beached on a sand bar at low tide and damage their boat.

Dredging the river also plays a role in flood protection and is designed to work in concert with Petaluma’s recently completed Corps of Engineers flood wall system. The flood waters that are channeled by the project will have no place to go down river if it is choked with debris, thus increasing the risk of flooding in downtown Petaluma.

The city and regional and federal partners should capitalize on this recent collaboration to ensure that the Petaluma River is dredged in a relatively short time frame.

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