Plan to Water Madrona Marsh on Hold : Torrance: Opposition by councilman has halted use of city drinking water to replenish an ecosystem ravaged by drought.

The wetlands of Madrona Marsh haven’t been very wet for about four years now.

Green thickets of tule grass have withered into tangled, gray stands of dead stems. Aquatic marsh plants have given way to carpets of common weeds. Nesting waterfowl, once a common sight, have flown elsewhere to raise their young.

The four-year California drought has meant a creeping disappearance for Madrona Marsh. Each year, fewer acres of the vernal marsh experience the life-sustaining winter floods that carry the delicate ecosystem through the drier months.

On Earth Day, retired contractor Don Roser set foot in Madrona for the first time and saw its shriveled condition.

He decided that his personal environmental project would be to get Madrona a nice, long drink of water.

After Roser did some vigorous lobbying at City Hall, the marsh got its first good sip on Wednesday night. But Roser faces a battle before the City Council next week to get the marsh the rest of the water it needs.

Plans by Torrance park administrators to release between two and four acre-feet of domestic drinking water into the marsh--an amount roughly equal to between 650,000 and 1.3 million gallons--have been blocked by City Councilman Dan Walker, who says he believes pouring city drinking water into a marsh during a drought sets a bad conservation example.

Gene Barnett, Torrance parks and recreation director, said Madrona’s water needs represent less than a fraction of 1% of his department’s overall water use. Although city departments earlier this year agreed to cut their water consumption by 10%, Barnett made plans to supply water to Madrona by simply cutting back a little more than 10% at each of the city’s parks.

Several of Walker’s council colleagues argue that watering the marsh is a perfectly rational thing to do.

“The reason for the city gaining title to that land was so that we could preserve the marsh as a natural habitat,” Mayor Katy Geissert said. “Because of the drought situation and because of the development all around there, there has been virtually no natural runoff. . . . This is important to retain the viability of the marsh.”

The city gained title to Madrona Marsh in 1986 after a protracted battle over proposed construction there. Eventually, the developer of Park Del Amo won the right to build 1,482 residential units and 850,000 square feet of office space in exchange for donating 34.5 acres of marshland and selling an additional 8.5 acres to the city.

Councilman Tim Mock said he sees the latest issue as balancing the use of one valuable resource--water--to save another.

“The council already has determined that the marsh is a valuable resource,” he said. “We spent a lot of time and effort to preserve the marshland, and this is just following through with that effort.”

But Walker said he believes that Madrona would be fine without a drop.

“The marsh can survive on its own. It has gone through periods of drought and periods of flood, and it will again,” he said. “It just isn’t right to use our drinking water to fill a marsh.”

On Wednesday afternoon, as city workers prepared to test the water valves that could quench Madrona’s thirst, Walker called Barnett and told him what he thought of the plan.

In response, Barnett briefly put the marsh watering plans on hold while he conferred with City Manager LeRoy Jackson.

At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jackson gave the go-ahead and city workers opened valves around the marsh, allowing roughly 200,000 gallons of water to flow in. At the request of the Metropolitan Water District, the water was pumped at night to prevent rapid evaporation.

City plans called for starting the pumps once or twice more over several days to give the marsh at least 500,000 gallons more.

But on Thursday morning, Walker demanded that the issue be placed on the council’s May 29 agenda. Jackson said no more water will be pumped until the council discusses the matter.

Roser, 62, said he never dreamed that he would have to wade through such a political morass.

“I just wanted to give the marsh a little help,” Roser said. “I told (the city) from the start that I’d be willing to pay for it, if that was the problem.”

Recently retired from his general contracting business, Roser said his water odyssey began when he took an Earth Day tour of Madrona Marsh last month.

“I came to the realization that it was drying up and it needed some help,” Roser said.

After confirming his suspicions with City Naturalist Walton Wright, who acts as the marsh’s caretaker, Roser started lobbying city officials and won financial support from a nonprofit group called Friends of Madrona Marsh.

City officials said they already were working on a water management plan for the marsh, which included installation of a pump to carry water into the marsh from a drainage sump on the corner of Sepulveda Boulevard and Maple Avenue.

But before the lines to the marsh were installed, this season’s only major storm dumped nearly 700,000 gallons of water into the sump, where existing pumps sent it out to sea.

Officials had just begun talking about replacing the lost sump water with domestic supplies when Roser stepped in.

“We were caught between two stewardships,” City Manager Jackson said. “We had to ask, did we disturb the natural balance of water in the marsh? Yes, we did. . . . Can we repair that without doing harm to our overall conservation program? The answer is yes.

“With those things in mind, I think we were correct in moving forward.”

Walking through the marsh Wednesday afternoon, Wright said the water is central to Madrona’s long-term health.

Once part of a 665-acre drainage basin, the 43-acre preserve that remains needs water funneled to it--either from sumps or some other source--to thrive, he said.

Although far from dead now, Madrona’s wetlands have shrunk to such an extent that the birds that used to call it home during the winter have had a difficult time surviving there, Wright said.

Foxes living in Madrona’s dry areas have eaten duck and coot eggs that normally would have been hidden deep inside a broad wetland. Those ducklings that did manage to hatch did not have enough water around them to protect them from the foxes. All were eaten, he said.

Last week, a pair of mallard ducks and their seven ducklings were found waddling through a carwash parking lot across from Madrona. Humane Society workers captured them, then asked Wright what to do.

Concerned that without enough water they would fall prey to Madrona’s foxes, he told the workers to take the ducks either to the South Coast Botanic Garden on the Palos Verdes Peninsula or to Machado Lake in Harbor City.

“I wasn’t looking for a cause,” Roser said, “but come on--they’re even turning the birds away. It ought to be as sacred as apple pie to keep something like this alive.”