A Natural Make-Over : Surfers Spearhead Plans for Restoration of San Juan Creek Mouth

The mouth of San Juan Creek, a swampy bed of stones and debris lined by concrete and chronically polluted, will have a far different look if some determined South County eco-surfers get their way.

Surfer Bill Barnes, who heads the Doheny Longboard Surfing Assn.’s Blue Water Task Force, a volunteer group pushing for restoration, believes the creek can be returned to its natural state--a wetland harboring water grasses, fish and other wildlife.

“We’ve been contacting different agencies on this, like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, city councils and just last week we had a really positive meeting with state Department of Fish and Game people and the Orange County Environmental Management Agency, and they said they’re really encouraged,” said Barnes, who by day works the phone to local government officials and water agencies, while at night working graveyard shift at United Parcel Service in Laguna Hills.

Restoration calls for removal of San Juan Creek’s concrete walls, which were installed by the corps to restrict the flow of rain runoff and protect surrounding homes and structures from flooding. Instead, a series of locks upstream would help handle water flow and plans call for widening the creek’s mouth into a 60-acre estuary near Pacific Coast Highway.

If successful, the plan could be a prototype for other restoration projects in the United States, said Scott Jenkins, an oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, who has worked on the creek plan.

“One exciting note,” said state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) who has endorsed Barnes’ efforts, “is the encouragement of the Department of Fish and Game, which recognizes the value of this restoration project. Their assistance will be of great value.”

John Schmidt, state Wildlife Conservation Board executive director in Sacramento, said the restoration plan “has merit,” and he is willing to help.

“But it’s going to take a lot of (political) players to help,” Schmidt said.

As a result of the meeting, Barnes said volunteers will apply for funds to conduct a feasibility study.

Bergeson said the offices of Sen. William A. Craven (R-Oceanside) and Assemblyman Bill Morrow, (R-Oceanside), have agreed to join her in the task of finding funding for the study, which will be difficult given the state’s thin budget. The study would cost an estimated $200,000.

Mary Jo Kerlin, Craven’s chief of staff, who was instrumental in inviting state officials to the meeting, praised Barnes and other local volunteers.

“A positive note is that the state Department of Fish and Game calls it a very good project,” Kerlin said. “And, they also said they could be called upon as resources.”

The river mouth was once an enormous watershed area, according to Ron Izumita, a landscape architect with IMA Design Group Inc. in Irvine, who helped design the proposed restoration plan. The area used to be an estuary, said Izumita, who collaborated with scientists and design engineers on the project.

“The problem is that the creek has since been restricted to a flood control channel and consequently the area takes a heavy beating during rains because of heavy runoff,” Izumita said.

Izumita noted that polluted runoff and spills of untreated sewage that have flowed from San Juan Creek and its tributaries into Doheny State Beach have caused numerous beach closures because of contaminated water that is dangerous to swimmers and surfers.

In 1991, surfers began testing ocean water at Doheny with help from the Surfrider Foundation, Barnes said. “We were shocked to see how polluted the water was and that’s when we started thinking about how we can stop this,” he said.

Projected costs range from $6 million to $10 million, Barnes said. The project’s major funding could be the Port of Long Beach, which hopes to pay for wetlands restoration in a variety of Southern California coastal areas as a means of credit for the wetlands it might endanger in its own harbor expansion, Barnes said. Port officials have consulted with the club on the San Juan Creek plans, Barnes said.

Jenkins from Scripps said the plan is feasible.

“This is a good prototype,” Jenkins said, “because this same fate with pollution has been suffered by most of America’s rivers. We have basically paved over our modern rivers and lined them with concrete or riprap. What is important here is coming up with a system of improvements that can be retrofitted.”

Wetlands, Jenkins said, serve as nature’s sewage treatment plants, “suitable for eating up all the biodegradable material of the garbage that runs off our streets.”

The plan, as proposed, is in two stages. The first stage, for the area from Stonehill Drive to the ocean, calls for tearing down the flood control channel walls and using terraces over a 60-acre area toward the mouth of the creek. The terraced area would have concrete pavers to hold dirt in place and become a base for growing plant life.

North of Stonehill Drive, preliminary plans call for a series of mechanical dams or locks designed to hold water and trap pollutants, which then would be removed by pumps.