Category: City Reports

A sage and sensible beaver-friend writes with the concern that the beavers’ very high price tag could begin to erode support. Is their any compromise, he asks, that would take care of the beavers and the bank? Of course, i answered. Many. (It is not the beavers’ that bear a high price tag though. We get them for free. It is the property owners demands and the city’s delay, a costly combination. Now the big kid on the block is demanding our lunch money and the tax-payers are turning out their pockets for change.)

The time allowed here for possible compromise? The 11 hours between when we learned about the decision and when the contract was awarded – not much room to maneuver. In its wake I’ve had more opportunity to read through the previously-secret reports and think about options.

Lets review. Back in February (yes February) the city received a geotechincal report of the damage done to the bank and possibly the properties adjacent to the beaver dam. Parts of the report were alarming and other parts were less credible. The city agreed to pursue a peer review of the report, which means hire their own geologist to look at it and the site. At the April meeting the council declined to vote on implementation of the subcommittee recommendations saying that they were waiting for the peer review.

In March the city attorney consulted Cal Engineering who visited the site in May and reviewed the report. They returned in early september and issued their “memo” dated September 9th. They noted no damage to the county election building, and no observable impact to Bertolas. They did find some tunneling under the bank and recommended any burrows be filled with grout.

To address the destabilized conditions along the east bank of the creek below 611 Escobar Street we recommend that the existing voids be filled using low pressure grouting methods. The separation void along the base of the CMU wall can be addressed by placement of grout or compacted fill. We recommend that in conjunction with the grouting, the vegetation along the toe of the creek bank and along the bank be re-established using biotechnical stabilization techniques. We believe that these measures will return the creek bank to an equivalent “pre-beaver condition.”

Now time was beaver supporters would have said “Filled with grout! horrors!” and reached for the fainting couch – but we have since seen a far more serious threat than the removal of some secret passage ways back to the water. If the beavers were protected and out of the way we would support filling those holes with any substance that will shore up the bank. Why not fill them and hand install some large bolders atop the bank, and plant a few trees for good measure.

The september 9th report contains nothing that beaver advocates would disagree with.

Ahhh, but facts are pliant little creatures. You’ve heard of the Downing Street Memo? Where it was argued that the Intelligence leading up to the Iraq war was being “fixed around the policy”? Well according to the city engineers report a short nine days later Cal Engineering revisited the site and overturned their original findings.

Pause a moment to reread that last sentence. I think what it really says is “when we gave our opinion last time we didn’t realize how much of this was the city’s liability”. So in the September 19th revision they overturned their previous recommendations and replaced it with “Danger Will Robinson!” indicating that only sheetpiling from bridge to bridge would save our heroes.

Now what on earth could have happened between September 9th and September 18th to cause such alarm? Landslide? Beaver terrorism? Remember that email we got about the potential dam lowering on the September 16th? The following day was the first closed door meeting of the council to discuss pending litigation, and the first time the mayor recused himself on the beaver issue. And the day after that, Cal-Engineering was called out to reconsider, and on the 19th issued their new and deteriorated bank report.

Everyone has their own definition of an emergency, I guess.

I would hazard a guess that when the city received the report on the ninth, they sent a proposal to the litigation-minded property owners who read the proposal and responded with a more significant threat of legal action. Since the city engineer was writing me about checking for holes on the 15th, I assume it was somewhere before then. Hence the emergency.

In the mean time, the lawsuit abating work will remove trees and vegetation from both banks, so that even if the beavers stay they will have nothing to eat. Remember that the upstanding environmental company awarded this contract is the same that did the vegetation removal between Marina Vista and the train bridge. What could go wrong?

Responding minimally to our concerns for beaver safety, the city did hire Skip Lisle who is coming out today to avert obvious danger, but he has to leave thursday for a seminar and cannot protect them beyond then. Beaver friend and all-around good guy Igor Skaredoff will be part of the oversignt committee without oversight powers, and I am glad its him.

So how would beaver people compromise? By following the recommendations of the city’s own experts dated 9-9-08. Fill the holes, plant the bank, hand install some boulders. A block of sheet metal isn’t a compromise, and it isn’t a victory for anyone, creek lover, beaver lover, or taxpayer-lover.