Sands of San Luis Rey: Miners Leave Few Tracks for River’s Protectors

The benign appearance of the riverbed belies the controversy that surrounds it: a river that is more often dry than wet, running more than 30 miles from the base of Palomar Mountain to the Pacific at Oceanside.

At its easternmost reaches, kids in swimming trunks, wearing old tennis shoes to protect their feet from the rocks, take innertube rides for short spurts of excitement. It runs along Indian reservations, posh golf resorts, thoroughbred horse ranches, unending fields of tomatoes and strawberries and an old California mission. At the west, it winds beside a junkyard before dissolving unspectacularly into the ocean.

To the passer-by, the river is perhaps most noteworthy for its banks of willows and cottonwoods. The more discerning wildlife expert values it as the seasonal nesting home to the least Bell’s vireo, a small, gray songbird listed on state and national endangered species lists.

Coveted Natural Resource

For these reasons, the river’s rural neighbors prize it as a natural resource best left untouched by man.

But it’s not. The sandy bottom of the San Luis Rey River is being bulldozed, scooped, sifted and trucked by the hundreds of loads weekly to asphalt and concrete companies throughout San Diego County, feeding growth’s insatiable appetite for raw building materials.

Here, along the river, is 70% of the county’s reserve of construction-quality sand available for commercial use. Today’s riverbed may be, literally, tomorrow’s new home foundation, swimming pool, stucco wall, tile roof and asphalt pothole patch.

And therein lies the dilemma facing those who live near, or want to preserve, or want to use, the San Luis Rey River: how best to raid its rich sand deposits without disturbing its neighbors--whether they be endangered songbirds or residents who sought out the rural ambience of a quiet life in the back country, punctuated instead now by the roar of a parade of sand and gravel trucks.

It is an issue that is pitting residents like Dominic Savoca against sandmen like Roger Gordon and professional bureaucrats like Ruth Potter and wildlife experts like Larry Salata.

“In the time I’ve lived here--12 years--they’ve gone from one or two mining operations to absolutely wild,” says Savoca, an insurance salesman who thought his move to Bonsall from the Los Angeles area would spare him, among other things, commercial truck traffic and reward him with, among other things, a slice of nature.

So upset is Savoca that, at his urging, a citizens’ activist group, Bonsall Area for a Rural Community, has agreed to finance a professionally produced videotape of the river, shot both from the ground and from a helicopter, “to raise public awareness of what is happening to the San Luis Rey river basin.”

The video, expected to cost about $1,000, will be distributed to local libraries and a host of federal, state and county government agencies. Savoca wants to show them both the untouched, pristine banks of the river and active sand-mining operations. He says he is not only convinced that the public doesn’t realize what’s happening to the river, but that some government people who are supposed to be safeguarding the river don’t fully comprehend the scope of the sand mining.

There may be some support for his cynicism. No single government agency is charged with overseeing sand mining in the river, and the county of San Diego, which has the primary responsibility, is woefully undermanned to give the river the attention it deserves, county officials say.

No one is even sure how much sand is being taken out of the riverbed.

“I understand that the county is growing and it needs building material. That’s fine,” says Savoca. “But why can’t the government and the businesses organize themselves and spread out the mining--take some from this river, some from another? Why do they have to screw up an entire river?”

Success Its Own Undoing?

In a sense, the river’s own success story as a sand supply may be its own undoing. Government surveys of available construction-grade sand have identified the San Luis Rey River as the most extensive cache of available sand in the county, measured in the billions of tons as the material is washed down into the valley from the abutting range of hills and mountains, including Palomar.

Sand is one of California’s natural resources, and state policy allows it to be mined. Local governments--in this case, the county of San Diego and the city of Oceanside--are not allowed to prohibit sand mining and can only put restrictions on the operations when they issue permits.

The legitimate sand miner has to jump through a series of bureaucratic hoops before he can turn his first shovel of sand. Among the agencies that either require permits or, at the least, monitor sand-mining operations are:

* The local land-use agency, whether it be a city or a county, which sets the conditions and restrictions for sand mining--including how much sand can be taken out, from where and the amount of truck traffic to be allowed.

* The regional Water Quality Control Board, which raises an eyebrow whenever someone tinkers with stream beds or appears to be a potential polluter of the water, especially when mining goes below the river’s water table.

* The county Air Pollution Control District, which is concerned about the amount of sand dust being kicked up.

* The San Diego Assn. of Governments, which has no direct land-use control over the river but which, on behalf of local governments, suggests policy to balance the need of commercial sand miners against environmental concerns of the river.

* The state Department of Fish and Game, which worries about the destruction of riparian habitat. Of special concern is the least Bell’s vireo, which nests in the very willows and trees that bulldozers might knock over in their quest for sand.

* The California Department of Transportation, which is concerned that, if too much sand is taken out of the river, highway bridge supports and abutments might become eroded and weakened.

* The California Division of Mines and Geology, which, among other things, wants to make sure that, when a mining operation is completed, a reclamation plan is implemented to return the site to its original state.

* The U.S. Soil Conservation Service, which is concerned whenever a river is tampered with because of the effect--positive or negative--it might have on soil erosion and flooding.

* The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which doesn’t care if sand is taken out of the river but wants to know if any sand is piled up in the riverbed during processing, because that is technically a discharge back into the river and comes under the governance of the federal Clean Water Act.

* The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which, on behalf of the Army Corps of Engineers, monitors whether riparian habitat is affected during any sand piling.

* The Environmental Protection Agency, which concerns itself with a myriad of environmental laws and guidelines and is the ultimate federal authority when sand miners and the environment are at loggerheads.

Just getting the initial go-ahead from the county requires an extensive environmental review, said Roger Gordon, who has gone through the process so he could extract sand from the river where it winds through Bonsall, not far from Savoca’s home.

“We had to do biological, archeological, traffic, historical, hydraulic, hydrologic and soil studies,” he said.

Little Time for Monitoring

Although nearly a dozen public agencies might have reason to look over sand miners’ shoulders, government officials concede that they have little time, energy or money to do so.

About 10 companies now take sand from the river, but the total amount of sand being taken out is unknown.

“There are all these agencies involved, and still we can’t seem to get a handle on sand mining,” bemoaned Ruth Potter, senior regional planner for Sandag, the San Diego Assn. of Governments. “It’s hard to even find out who’s doing the sand mining, because the permits go with the property (owner), not the operator, and operators have come and gone,” she said. (Property owners lease out or assign mining rights to contractors.) “I’ve checked with the county, but we just can’t get a good fix on everyone who’s out there. Sometimes we simply spot a sand truck leaving an area. Some companies seem to dig wherever and whenever they please.

“The San Luis Rey is a strange area. A lot of them up there don’t like regulations, and they go out and do what they feel they can get away with and later worry about how to deal with whatever problem there may be,” Potter said.

“We don’t even know how much sand is coming out of the river because no one will tell you. They don’t want their competition to know,” she said.

Usually, the county will limit the number of truckloads of sand any given operator is allowed to haul off the site any given day. Roger Gordon, for instance, says he is limited to 35 truckloads daily.

But Sue Gray, the county’s chief enforcement officer for building and zoning violations, says it is “difficult for us to know” if the companies are complying.

“We don’t have the staff to count the number of trucks coming out of any given site,” she said. “We’ll maybe spend an hour or two periodically (watching), and figure out a daily average. If we get complaints, we’ll spend more time on it. And some pits have to maintain records of how many trucks leave.”

But, Gray added, “We don’t have the manpower to monitor these operations on a weekly basis.”

The county has a mixed record for enforcement, having shut down some operations temporarily while they got proper permits, after the fact, and shutting down other operations altogether after they failed to come in compliance. How much sand was taken out of the river illegally is not known.

Other operators say a few bad apples have tarnished the industry’s reputation, and say they, by and large, are following the rules.

Roger Gordon readily acknowledges, for instance, that on some days he runs more than the 35 truckloads of sand he is allowed by his permit. But, on other days, he says, he sends fewer trucks out of the river bottom and, on balance, he says he is running his business within the permit guidelines.

Projection of Need

Bill Healy, deputy director for community planning at the county’s Department of Planning and Land Use, said officials have asked the sand-mining industry to fund a $50,000 study to project sand extraction rates for the future, based on the expected needed for sand from the river. But so far the industry has not forwarded the money for the study.

“We want to do an inventory of the mineral deposits throughout the whole county and develop policies to reconcile the environmental sensitivities of the river with the need to mine the sand deposits in the river,” he said. “There’s no plan in existence that I know of that looks at the total amount of sand that can be extracted in any given year,” Healy said. “But the supply won’t dry up. The problem is finding where the deposits are located and determining the environmental impacts in removing those deposits.”

That’s a concern of people like Larry Salata, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and an expert on riparian habitats--like that of the San Luis Rey River, which he knows intimately.

Indeed, Salata has traveled the river and found sand-mining operations that he suspects may not be permitted and has passed the information on to the Corps of Engineers.

“There are at least two major sand-mining operations that are currently operating without the benefit of a Corps permit,” he contends. “Maybe through ignorance, or for some other reason, they fail to coordinate with all the appropriate agencies.”

Corps of Engineers officials confirm receipt of Palata’s complaint, but haven’t had time to investigate the matter fully, they said.

John Winn is the only Corps ecologist assigned to San Diego. He arrived about a month ago from Mobile, Ala., where he is permanently assigned, and expects to return there in another month or two. He’s in San Diego only temporarily, filling a job that had gone unstaffed for several months before his arrival.

Most of his time, Winn said, is spent inspecting housing developments to determine the effect--including water and silt runoff--they will have on streams, rivers and lagoons.

“I’ve spent a couple of hours driving along the river, and I talked to one fellow who insisted he had the proper permits,” Winn said. “But I haven’t had the time yet to check him out in our files. I hope to do that (this) week.

“The rarest habitat you have is stream-side vegetation in a desert environment, like this one,” said Winn.

Can Be Beneficial

Officials point out that, if done properly, sand mining has its benefits.

“If done properly, it can open up a flood way and prevent flooding over the river banks,” noted Vic Smothers, who is with the Fallbrook office of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service.

The pits that are dug in the excavation process can fill with water and themselves become stop-off resting areas for migratory birds, he added.

Those same pits will fill with more sand that is washed downstream in the rainy season, giving the operator more material to be scooped up and delivered to his customers.

But, if too many excavation pits are grouped too close together, water can rush downstream after having dropped off its sand load, and the dynamics of that so-called “hungry water” can scour the stream bed--and eat away at the footings of bridges and abutments.

“I don’t think there’s a plan on where these pits are located,” Smothers said. “The basic premise seems to be, ‘We need the sand; we have an industry that demands it, and it’s necessary in the economy of urban development.’ But I’m not sure there’s a reasonable approach to it along the river. Sand should only be mined at its replenishment rate--and we don’t know what that rate is.”

Salata’s concern is possible damage to the habitat.

“The problem these (sand-mining) operations create is the destruction of wetland vegetation that, in some cases, is occupied by federal endangered species,” he said. “The least Bell’s vireo, for instance, occupies a habitat of several components, including willows that take 5 to 10 years to develop. When you remove that from a riverbed, obviously there’s a long-term lag associated with replacing it, even if you replant tomorrow.”

Furthermore, he noted, altering a stream bed can change the water flow downstream, affecting habitats well out of view of the mining itself.

“We’ve never assessed the cumulative affects of sand mining in a particular drainage, like the San Luis Rey River,” Palata said. “Potentially, sand mining is not an incompatible activity, assuming the technology exists to recreate the resource values that are impacted so there is no net loss. But, at this point in time, that ability has yet to be demonstrated.

“The challenge is to ensure there’s no loss of valuable wetlands, yet making those resources available for public use,” he said.