Plan Gives Pamo Dam Project a Boost : Water Agency Agrees to Help Least Bell’s Vireo

One of the principal stumbling blocks to the proposed Pamo Dam project faded Thursday when the San Diego County Water Authority approved a scheme to protect a few dozen small, gray songbirds from the effects of the giant reservoir project.

The authority unanimously voted to OK a plan under which it would regularly release water from the reservoir near Ramona and another reservoir nearby in order to nourish 1,500 acres of habitat set aside in the Pamo and San Pasqual valleys for the least Bell’s vireo.

The plan to protect the endangered species has the approval of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service--a virtual prerequisite to a permit for the dam from the Army Corps of Engineers, which is expected to decide in March on whether to issue the permit.

“This was a big step,” said Lawrence R. Michaels, general manager of the Water Authority. “So naturally, we’re very satisfied with it. There still is the (Corps of Engineers) decision. The fact is that the Pamo project has a lot of effects on the environment.”

“We’re tickled to death that they reached a conclusion on Pamo,” said Assemblyman Larry Stirling. Stirling has been working on a comprehensive plan to allow development in the county while satisfying federal environmental officials that the bird is protected.

“More importantly, they’ve established the fact that all parties are negotiating in good faith,” Stirling said. “There’s no attempt to overcome or get around the federal law. We recognize that the law is there, the species is listed and that we have to carry the burden of mitigation.”

The least Bell’s vireo, shrinking in numbers throughout California as development reduces its habitat, was placed on the federal Endangered Species List in May. The listing made it a criminal offense to harm or “jeopardize” a member of the migratory species.

For that reason, proposals for publicly funded development that might affect vireo habitat are now subject to the scrutiny of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Much of the habitat, or potential habitat, of the estimated 300 breeding pairs remaining lies in San Diego County.

Officials had expressed fears that the bird would block Pamo Dam, four large road projects and other public works plans in the county. The vote Thursday made the Pamo project the first to be subject to an official compromise.

Under the plan, approved last month by the Fish and Wildlife Service, 200 to 400 acre-feet of water are to be released from the Pamo Dam in its first year. The water is intended to maintain and help develop 944 acres of vireo habitat downstream in the San Pasqual Valley.

Similarly, 200 acre-feet of water would be released from the Sutherland reservoir into the Santa Ysabel Creek to nourish additional habitat above the Pamo reservoir. The releases from both reservoirs are to be timed “to mimic the natural existing flow rate.”

The agreement between the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Water Authority also specifies that:

- All identified 168 acres of vireo habitat to be inundated by the filling of the reservoir, and the 11 acres to be destroyed by a proposed pipeline, are to be “offset” by revegetation of 477 acres of city-owned farmland to be protected as new habitat.

- The revegetation is to include creation of a dense foliage layer, or under-story, and stands of taller trees. The plants specified include sand-bar willow, black willow, nightshade, wild blackberry, cottonwood, sycamore and wild rose.

- Mowing and the use of herbicides will be barred in the mitigation areas.

- The authority is to administer a monitoring and management program for nesting vireos for 10 years upon issuance of the permit by the Corps of Engineers. That is to include removal of young brown-headed cowbirds, the parasite bird species that invades the vireo’s streamside territory.

Finally, the Fish and Wildlife Service has recommended that the Corps of Engineers require as a condition of any permit that the Water Authority operate a cowbird-trapping program during the vireo nesting season for 10 years. It also has suggested that channelization and sand mining in the Santa Ysabel Creek be regulated by the Corps of Engineers because, the Fish and Wildlife Service says, they are helping degrade vireo habitat.

The $86-million Pamo project would consist of a 264-foot-high concrete dam across the Santa Ysabel Creek and inundation of 1,800 acres in the pristine Pamo Valley. The reservoir would hold about 130,000 acre-feet of imported water for use in emergencies by San Diego County.

Attached to the project is to be the largest water reclamation project ever in San Diego County, reclaiming 11,000 acre-feet of treated waste water. The $11-million project would replenish depleted supplies and improve ground water quality in the San Pasqual Valley.

The water is to be piped from the Escondido waste-water treatment plant and added to the ground water in the valley, Michaels said. At the same time, the authority would pump out existing supplies, diminished in quality through extensive agricultural use.

That water would be pumped out via wells and piped back to Escondido for disposal in the ocean.