Edition:
October 3, 2008
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The Friday Flyer Editor
David Johnston announced at last month’s Board meeting that the dredge and its related equipment is being sold, not by the POA as some may assume, but by the Lake Elsinore San Jacinto Watershed Authority (LESJWA), who provided the funds for the dredging project four years ago. Mayor Carl Armbrust, who served on the POA Board prior to the dredge’s arrival, calls the news of the sale “a sad day” for Canyon Lake.
Nessie! Oh, the joy she brought when she first arrived in the waters of the East Bay in the May 2005. Oh, the consternation the yellow beast created when her components couldn’t keep up with the demands of sucking sediment from the East Bay’s depths; the frustration she stirred up when she sat in dry dock for months, waiting for new equipment to help her run more efficiently; the problems she caused when a lawsuit claimed she was involved in a public works project, and a judge determined those who operated her should be paid State prevailing wages.
Oh, sad day for all residents who hoped Nessie would be one of the solutions to Canyon Lake’s water quality problems – the dredge, along with all its equipment, will soon be but a brief memory in the community’s 40-year history.
As Director David Johnston reported and LESJWA Administrator Mark Norton confirmed Monday, much of the dredge equipment has already been sold and the sale of the dredge itself is currently being finalized.
“Nessie N8DX” was the official name given by the manufacturers of the dredge that plied the eastern end of East Bay and Lucky Cove, scooping up 40 years of silt deposited by Salt Creek in the artificially created lakebed.
According to Mark, it was with great hope and a valiant effort on the part of the LESJWA board, the Regional Water Quality Control board, then City Councilman Jack Wamsley and other City and POA officials that a portion of the $15 million dollars in funds from the Clean Water Act, approved by California voters in the late 1990s, was provided to the Property Owners Association to dredge Canyon Lake, which is part of LESJWA’s 750-mile watershed.
In those exciting early days, the dredging project was awarded the 2005 Unique Collaboration Award from the Santa Ana Watershed Coalition. The organization recognized the cooperation between the various LESJWA members to fund and implement the project. Initially promising $900,000 – money the POA Board decided to use for the purchase of the dredge – LESJWA later added another $339,233 as the costs associated with dredging grew when the project stalled while waiting for permits from the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Fish and Game.
Once the permits came through and the dredge was finally up and running with a new and improved de-watering system, it was able to remove between 200 and 250 cubic yards of sediment from the lake each day it ran – a total of 20,000 cubic yards, according to Mark. The work was performed by specially trained members of the Operations Department.
Then, according to POA Corporate Counsel Pete Racobs, “in July 2005, the Southern California Labor/Management Operating Engineers Contract Compliance Committee filed a claim with the California Department of Industrial Relations asserting the Association’s agreement with LESJWA converted the dredging project from a private work-of-improvement to a public work-of-improvement for which State prevailing wages must be paid.
“Both the Association and LESJWA filed responses to the claim, denying that the project qualified as a public work. In June 2007, the Department issued a letter concluding the dredging project was a public work-of-improvement . . . ” Pete’s full report can be found in the archives at www.thefridayflyer (May 23, 2008) and explains the litigation that eventually led the POA Board to abandon the dredging project.
In effect, accepting public funds from LESJWA doomed the project from the start, though, according to Jack, none of those involved in putting the deal together predicted it would be labeled a “public work-of-improvement,” including lawyers for Canyon Lake, LESJWA, EVMWD and at the State level.
“Our (LESJWA) board worked hard to make this a successful project but, in the end, it was the litigation (with the Southern California Labor/Management Operating Engineers Contract Compliance Committee) and the threat of further litigation (Bolanos)” (that brought the dredging to a halt), says Mark.
Nevertheless, LESJWA continues to be committed to helping Canyon Lake with its water quality issues through a multi-agency task force, Mark says. It is currently researching various types of aeration systems, one of which is working quite successfully in Lake Elsinore.
In the meantime, the sale of the dredge equipment has begun, with the 12-ft. by 40-ft. by 20-ft. high solids-removal unit, two belt presses and four de-watering bins already in the process of being dismantled, removed and turned over to a company called MarTint Environmental. The sale is still being finalized on the dredge itself, according to Mark.
He adds that monies from the sale of the dredge will continue the mission of LESJWA to assist local entities meet the requirements of the Environment Protection Agency’s “Total Maximum Daily Loads” (TMDL), a calculation of the maximum amount of a pollutant that a water body can receive and still meet water quality standards. According to www.epa.gov, the Clean Water Act, section 303, establishes the water quality standards and TMDL programs to which Canyon Lake is subject.
The POA intends to sell a few items of equipment it purchased as well, says Controller Ron Phipps. In the meantime, plans are in the works to create a berm from the extracted material now sitting at East Port.
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