Editorial: Don’t wait on San Rafael Canal dredging plan again
It is a small, but important step. The Army Corps of Engineers is going to spend $1.3 million to design the long-delayed dredging of the San Rafael Canal, one of Marin’s busiest recreational and commercial waterways.
It’s been 17 years since the tidal creek was last fully dredged and it shows. The longer maintenance dredging is delayed, the higher the cost climbs.
Complete dredging of the canal is expected to cost $12 million. Getting the work designed is a critical first step toward getting on the Corps’ work list and getting the job done.
This is one of those jobs that involves bringing home tax dollars we send to Washington, D.C. Certainly, there are busier waterways and larger projects on the Corps’ agenda, but wise use of those federal dollars would not delay other, smaller projects whose cost will only rise from delaying them year after year.
Years of built-up silt and mud have already reduced the San Rafael Canal’s depth, limiting navigation. The Corps’ goals should be that of supporting marine-oriented commercial business, not killing it — or allowing it to become suffocated by choking off access.
Hundreds of smaller economies across the United States depend on such so-called “forgotten harbors.”
The Corps also has an important role in improving flood protection. Reducing the holding capacity of the canal poses a growing public-safety threat.
As Nadine Urciuoli, president of the San Rafael Channel Association and general manager of Helmut’s Marine Service on Canal Street, said, “With the last full dredging taking place in 2002, we have been growing fearful that our waterway would soon silt in past the point of no return.”
She, others with businesses and residences along the canal, City Hall and Rep. Jared Huffman lobbied for the Corps to provide funding for catching up with this vital maintenance task — one that should have been completed in 2012.
Their efforts to winning this initial measure in the Corps’ consideration have paid off.
They are hoping the Corps’ first step, which will include assessing the need, will lead to full federal funding. The fact that the canal is, in some places, less than two feet deep and the federal standard calls for depths of six to eight feet seems to make the need fairly clear.
In addition, the federal standard is to perform maintenance dredging routinely every 6 to 8 years. Funding problems have stood in the way of meeting that common-sense engineering and cost-saving objective.
It seems as if every step takes an extensive local lobbying effort to win support to include these projects on the Corps’ list of priorities in San Francisco and in Washington.
The need is obvious. The importance, both in terms of local commercial and recreational viability, public-safety issues and the wiser management of tax dollars should make the next steps clear, as well.
By: MARIN IJ EDITORIAL BOARD
Source: Marin Independent Journal
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