Batiquitos Lagoon Reopened to Sea in Restoration Study

Life-giving seawater surges once more through the mouth of Batiquitos Lagoon in Carlsbad as part of a project designed to restore the ecology of the dying body of water.

On Friday, consultants working with the City of Carlsbad and the Port of Los Angeles bulldozed the 596-acre lagoon’s mouth open in order to study water currents and circulation as tides naturally flush it twice daily.

The flushing, which city officials say will last about 10 days before the mouth closes of its own accord, is part of a preliminary study to determine the cost of permanently restoring regular flushing to the lagoon.

“We’ve been working pretty much with conceptual plans up until now,” said Lillian Kawasaki, who works for the Port of Los Angeles but is on loan to Carlsbad as manager of the lagoon-enhancement project. “We need to come up with good cost estimates to determine whether we have a good project. If the project ends up costing $100 million, that’s not one that anyone is going to fund.”

In a bit of tit-for-tat environmental maneuvering, Batiquitos Lagoon stands to benefit from a proposed San Pedro area landfill.

Last year, the Port of Los Angeles and Pacific Texas Pipeline Co. agreed to restore the stagnating Carlsbad lagoon in return for state approval of the 450-acre landfill that will mark one end of a 1,030-mile pipeline from Los Angeles Harbor to Midland, Texas.

Pacific Texas has been required to place $15 million in an escrow account for the restoration project. The Port of Los Angeles has advanced $450,000 for the seven-month preliminary study of the lagoon now in progress.

At a public information meeting in the Carlsbad City Council chambers tonight at 7 p.m., consultants and city officials will explain what the lagoon-enhancement program hopes to achieve and the purpose of the preliminary project. Council chambers are at 1200 Elm Ave.

The lagoon has not had continuous flushing since the mid-19th Century, and steady population growth in North County has worsened prospects for its health, Kawasaki said. Three “choke points”--Old Highway 101, a railroad bridge and Interstate 5--help keep the lagoon’s channel to the sea closed. The mouth does open, but only seasonally, and months go by with lagoon water stagnating and evaporating.

In addition, Kawasaki said, runoff from nearby farms and residential developments has contributed to a large buildup of silt in the lagoon.

“Now it’s a very extreme environment,” she said. “In mid-summertime it can get hyper-saline, very salty. Not many kinds of animals can survive that harsh an environment. Mostly it’s sand and mud and shallow water now.”

Officials believe that, by dredging the lagoon and permanently opening the lagoon’s mouth to the sea, a vibrant ecology of birds and marine life can be restored to the lagoon and its surrounding wetlands.

A deeper lagoon could be home to fish such as croaker, halibut and schools of anchovies, Kawasaki said. Bottom life food for fish, worms and crabs may once again thrive where now there are mostly only insect larvae. With tidal washing, mud flats would also become a greater food source for birds, attracting a wider variety.

During the preliminary tests, which are expected to conclude in December, scientists and technicians from a Santa Ana consulting firm, CH2M Hill, will analyze soil samples and water in the lagoon.