By Camas Frank~
Exactly two years ago folks were standing in the middle of Laguna Lake taking panorama shots from the bottom of a dust bowl.
Times may have changed as the lake grew blue and beautiful again this April, but the issues that locals in the subdivisions abutting the Lake rose then, about a history of neglect and sediment buildup are starting to be addressed.
The City of SLO’s Natural Resource Manager Bob Hill led a public meeting Aug.4 for locals to hear what staff has come up with regarding the Laguna Lake Dredging and Sediment Management Project.
Held in the Multi-Purpose Room at Laguna Middle School, about 120 residents turned out. Hill, Assistant City Manager Derek Johnson and members of the hired consultant team from MNS Engineering gave a brief run down of the four dredging projects they’d come up with.
Former SLO City Mayor Dave Romero also got involved with his history of the area going back to the mid-1950’s. The City’s official planning documents for how to manage the Lake and the neighborhood issues only go back to 1961.
The oldest lingering misunderstanding when City residents debate the future of Laguna Lake is over the lake being a natural feature of the landscape or artificial.
Perfumo Creek was straightened and rerouted into the smaller natural body in 1965. At about the same time mass quantities of the soil were dredged from the eastern arm to form the foundations for nearby neighborhoods.
Plans at the time called for Laguna Park to feature a marina, archery area, and golf course of its own.
As explained by Romero, large storms in the 1970’s caused far more sedimentation than had been expected and by the 1980’s City staff knew that the lake was rapidly filling with material from the Perfumo watershed. There are also famous – at least locally – pictures from that era that show trucks and lower tech dredging equipment mired in several foot deep mud after attempting small scale removal.
That in part is the illustration of why Hill and the consultants have abandoned the idea of dredging while the Lake is dry, aside from which, the City had no permits on hand.
Hill attempted, from memory, to list the approximately 15 state and federal agency permits required for the current project, which depending on the model used, could be a massive one time expenditure with an engineering estimate cost of $20 million or any range of smaller stepping stones.
The majority of public comment centered around a widespread desire for Laguna Lake residents not to pay for the project anymore than the standard share of property taxes rendered by all homeowners in the City and criticism of the plan to have the dirt dehydrated and shipped to Cold Canyon Landfill.
In short, there is nothing about the planning process that has been inexpensive, which is partly the reason that this type of project has not been enacted since the 1993 Laguna Lake Master Plan was drafted. In 2015 a Laguna Lake Natural Reserve Conservation Plan was approved and funding for the $445,000 consultant survey and design of three different dredging options was approved. Most recently soil testing cost approximately $30,000.
At one time said Romero, the City had looked at dredging out material and placing it in drying ponds on 100 acres of City owned land behind the park.
That option although much cheaper is essentially a no-go as the testing turned up unacceptably high levels of Nickel and Chromium-6 in the soil beneath the lake. Such concentrations are natural in the serpentine soil that makes up the hills to the north-east but to condense it and spread it over the landscape in what is now a natural preserve would be akin to disposing of mining tailings and would create toxic dust as it dried in the already windy valley.
Hill said he planned to make the hundreds of pages in planning documents and reports – generated with the money already spent – public at least two weeks before staff takes an item to the SLO City Council.
The City Council is slated to hear the options, and start looking at funding mechanisms on Sept. 20.
Traditional staff reports are only available a week ahead of meetings, but hill said there is a lot of information and I want people to really understand what we’re talking about.
Two of the funding mechanisms available, variations on a special benefit assessment district to property owners would either have to have the majority vote of affected homeowners, or two-thirds vote of registered voters in the area, if Council opted not to pay out of the general fund.
