LAKEPORT >> Lake County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved a request to apply for a grant from the Lake County Water Resources department. The funds would go toward a tule mitigation and replanting bank project.
The grant, if approved by the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service, would aid in a step toward restoring Clear Lake’s health. “It will promote and enhance the natural tule wetland that, before European settlement in the basin, surrounded Clear Lake and provided the lake’s filtration for sediment and nutrients,” Lake County Water Resources Director Scott De Leon explained. “It will also establish a permanent mechanism for replanting tules and mitigating any tule removal.”
Farming and other uses of the land led to the loss of 80 percent of the lake’s natural tule wetlands over the decades. In additional to filtering sediment, the plant serves as protection for the Clear Lake Hitch from predators. The rehabilitation program is expected to help increase the hitch population.
“Farmers and ranchers will be paid for planting more tules on their land or providing tules to be planted in areas in need,” De Leon said.
Under the county’s current shoreline ordinance, tule removal is not allowed on residential properties, but is permitted for commercial projects if “ill-defined mitigation is incorporated,” according to De Leon. It “only serves to stop the loss of tules, but does nothing to replant tules that were removed prior” to its adoption.
Under the proposed plan, a mitigation and replanting bank will function similar to a wetland mitigation bank or tree mitigation bank, where a property owner wishing to clear a protected area of tules along the shore line must either replant tules or pay a mitigation fee that will be deposited into the tule bank. This will be used to replant tules at an off-site location in need of rehabilitation.
Farmers and ranchers producing walnuts, pears, winegrapes, livestock and hay along the lake shore will be the tule bank.
Reduction in phosphorous loading is required by the Clean Water Act. Additionally, a reduction in algae blooms, which are thought to be directly related to phosphorous loading in the lake, is a goal of the project.
The board sat as the Lake County Watershed Protection District during the discussion
Contact J. W. Burch, IV at 900-2022.
