Truce on the Bridge : Pact Will Protect Rare Fish but Allow Repair of Malibu Span

It’s called the tidewater goby.

Its friends say a better name for the two-inch fish that swims in Malibu Lagoon might be red herring.

That’s because others blame the shy, almost translucent goby for delaying construction of a new Pacific Coast Highway bridge that might have saved thousands of Malibu residents from being temporarily stranded in last month’s storms.

But the dispute may have ended Friday as environmentalists and engineers reached a compromise that clears the way for construction to finally begin on a $9-million Malibu bridge and aims at preserving the rare fish at the same time.

The goby was reintroduced to the lagoon in 1991 after an absence of three decades. Last year, it was placed on the federal endangered species list--just in time to delay the long-planned construction of a stronger bridge that would have easily weathered last month’s storm.

For a time, it looked as if reconstruction work around the weakened Malibu bridge might mean goodby, goby.

Gov. Pete Wilson hinted at that three weeks ago when he stood atop the span and declared Malibu residents “more endangered” than the tidewater goby. He called upon federal officials to scrap the endangered species list.

The list will stay. Officials say the tidewater goby will, too.

Caltrans administrators promised to hire special goby watchers to look out for the rare fish. They pledged to schedule bridge workers’ creek-bottom work around the fish’s springtime spawning period.

In return, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to round-the-clock construction work beginning Feb. 15.

Workers getting an incentive bonus similar to that used during the repair of the Santa Monica Freeway after last year’s earthquake will race to finish a new four-lane crossing by June 1, Caltrans administrators said.

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The compromise is good news for Malibu residents who rely on the 60-year-old, four-lane lagoon bridge. Last month, the 525-foot bridge was completely closed. It was later reopened to foot traffic only, until experts decided the north side of the bridge was safe for two lanes of cars.

It’s even better news for ecologists who have closely watched the return of the tidewater goby to the lagoon’s brackish waters. It is found nowhere else in Los Angeles County.

“The goby is one of the many species that will disappear if we don’t take action,” said Arcadia biologist Cam Swift, who had petitioned the federal government to put the goby on the endangered list.

Swift, a former curator of fishes for the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History who now teaches at Loyola Marymount University, predicted that bridge-builders and gobies can coexist. “They can avoid the extreme effects on the lagoon, not drying it out, for example,” he said.

Earlier bridge-building plans had called for a “dewatering” of the lagoon--draining part of it so construction equipment could get into the creek bed, according to David Gottlieb, a director of the Topanga-Las Virgenes Resource Conservation District. That is the agency that reintroduced the tidewater goby to the lagoon.

“You wonder whether the goby’s being used as scapegoat, or are there other circumstances holding up the bridge,” Gottlieb, of Topanga Canyon, said before Friday’s agreement was reached. “I can see them grinding the little gobies into puree. Then all the yuppies could then have Malibu goby salad dressing.”

Gobies apparently existed in Malibu Lagoon until stream bulldozing killed them off in the 1960s. Conservation district biologist Sean Manion used plastic bags and buckets to relocate 52 of them there from the mouth of the Ventura River on April 5, 1991.

By the next year, a netting survey in the lagoon turned up more than 300 in the vicinity of the bridge, said Manion, a Topanga Canyon resident.

Manion said he hopes Caltrans’ contractor avoids dropping chunks of the old bridge or wet concrete from the new one into the water during the project.

He said that it might be wise to install a fine-mesh screen around the construction site to protect the fish.

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Ron Kosinski, chief environmental planner for Caltrans, said his agency may hire Manion to help watch over the gobies during the project. About $200,000 has been set side for “environmental mitigation,” he said.

“Sean planted them there,” Kosinski said with a laugh. “Thanks a lot, Sean. Couldn’t you have planted them somewhere else except around our bridge?”

Kosinski confirmed that Caltrans was poised to start the bridge project when the goby landed on the endangered species list “and we had to pull back.” But it might be “a little optimistic” to say that the new bridge would have been finished by last month’s storm even if work had started on time.

If the goby is killed off--or driven off--by the bridge builders, Caltrans will go hunting for new ones for the lagoon after the fall, he promised.

“Our bridge will be done after that,” Kosinski said. “Then the goby can swim and spawn his little heart out and we won’t care.”

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The Tidewater Goby

Tidewater goby ( Eucyclogobius newberryi )

* Characteristics: About two inches long; dark olive and mottled brown color helps it blend in with rocks and sand.

* Habitat: Brackish water formed where freshwater streams empty into the ocean, throughout the length of California. Urbanization has drastically cut into its numbers and tidewater gobies are now found only locally in estuaries at Camp Pendleton, Malibu Lagoon and in the Santa Clara and Ventura rivers in Ventura County.

* Status: Reintroduced to Malibu Lagoon in 1991 after disappearing from there about 30 years earlier. Placed on the federal endangered species list a year ago.

Sources: Audubon Society, Topanga-Las Virgenes Resource Conservation District.