Channel Is a Bargain, Times Two

On April 16, a small crowd stood on the beach here just as dawn broke. The onlookers watched a bulldozer as it sliced through the sand near Pacific Coast Highway and the mouth of the Santa Ana River.

Cheers resounded as the bulldozer made its last cut at 6:27 a.m., and the Pacific Ocean rolled into a new channel.

The channel linked the ocean with the newly restored Huntington Beach Wetlands, a 25-acre environmental preserve. The opening became one of the very rare times in modern California history when a new link was cut between the ocean and inland waters.

At the time, most of the cheers for the channel were for its role in helping restore the wetlands. Environmentalists had noted that the inlet, called the Talbert Channel, would provide natural ocean flushing of the brackish wetlands.

This year the $14-million channel is winning more cheers, but for a different reason: It is providing northwest Orange County with a big relief valve for floodwaters from the heavy rainstorms of this year.

“Engineers point out that if this (channel) had been in place in 1983, we wouldn’t have had the floods that year that caused so much damage to Huntington Beach,” Councilman Peter M. Green said. “We’re very pleased with the new channel.”

William Reiter, public works operations manager for Orange County’s Environmental Management Agency, similarly praised the channel’s flood-control work.

“The system has worked remarkably well,” he said. “It’s carried large amounts of rain. It’s a much better outlet (for flood drainage) than the previous one.”

The old outlet was a narrow, twisting, silt-laden stream that fed into the Santa Ana River, just north of where the river meets the ocean.

Drainage water from other parts of Orange County flowed into the Huntington Beach Wetlands and then, through the old stream bed, into the Santa Ana River. The problem was that this narrow, frequently clogged outlet proved inadequate for both draining off floodwaters and allowing ocean water to move into the wetlands.

County officials decided that a new flood channel was needed. The county then obtained state and federal permission and funding for cutting a new opening to the ocean. The county’s quest for that rarely given permission was eased by the new opening’s other role: restoring endangered wetlands.

Gary Gorman, executive director of the nonprofit Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy, was among those in the crowd in April watching the final connection of ocean and wetlands. At the time, he predicted that the new channel would benefit the 25-acre wetlands, which the conservancy bought and opened in 1989. The wetlands is on the inland side of Pacific Coast Highway, between Brookhurst Street and the Santa Ana River.

Gorman said his expectations for the channel have been more than fulfilled during the past year. “It’s definitely been a help,” he said.

Gorman said the channel has proved efficient for flood control, despite heavy rains and stormy ocean waters. “Even during peaks of the storms, the waters have never really gotten high” in the wetlands and channel, he said. “I think the outlet has really helped the south Huntington Beach area.”

Gorman said the new channel, as he predicted, has also been a boon to wildlife in the wetlands. “We’ve got a wider tidal range within the marsh, and I believe the number of fish has increased.”

Gordon Smith, board chairman of the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy, similarly praised the channel’s benefit to the wetlands during the past year.

“Overall there is a richer environment (in the wetlands) with the channel open,” he said. “We now have a richer variety of aquatic species in the marsh.”

Smith said there has been one minor problem since Talbert Channel opened: The force of tides pushing into the wetlands from the ocean has eroded some small islands in the wetlands.

“We’ve lost a little bit of the islands, but not much, and this was anticipated,” he said.

Gorman said the opening of the Talbert Channel is truly historic. He said there may be one more new ocean channel cut in future years--a proposed opening to the sea at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve. Beyond that, Gorman said: “I doubt you will ever see a new channel (to the ocean) anywhere in Southern California.”