The unlawful invasion of giant garter snake habitat by airport work
crews will eventually cost Sacramento County more than $2 million.
While a 9.7-acre tule-filled slough known
as Prichard Lake may have seemed like a good place to deposit dirt and other
waste materials back in 1993 when the practice began, it has turned into a
regulatory nightmare for the county and its personnel who operate Sacramento
International Airport.
First, the
wetlands are navigable waters of the United States as they are defined in the
federal Clean Water Act. Consequently, nothing may be dumped there without a
permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Second, the area is habitat for the giant
garter snake, a threatened species that is protected by the federal Endangered
Species Act.
Sacramento County has agreed, through a
lawsuit in U.S. District Court, to pay an $87,000 civil penalty for its
admitted transgression.
The agreement calls for the county to
spend an additional $2.2 million restoring 7.8 acres of the lake site to
pre-1993 conditions and compensating for the temporary loss of the site by
creating additional wetlands on an adjacent 33-acre parcel that once was a rice
field.
U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell
Jr. signed off on the pact Monday.
All of the property involved belongs to
the county as part of an airport noise buffer zone and lies within the flight
path of landing planes. It is located two miles north of the airport, a half
mile south of the Sacramento-Sutter County line, and a half mile east of the
Sacramento River.
Since the Corps of Engineers called a
halt to the dumping in 2002, the county has spent $700,000 removing the fill
that had been placed there and "creating some drainage courses to support
continued movement of water through the site," according to Robert Leonard,
chief operating officer of county airports.
"With that work and the passage of time,
in many ways the site has healed itself," Leonard said. "The natural vegetation
has recovered."
Kathleen Dadey, regulatory project
manager for the corps, said Tuesday all that is left for the county to do on
the Prichard Lake site is construction of two channels leading from culverts
under an adjacent abandoned road.
"In dry years, this could be another
source of water for the site," Dadey said.
Leonard, who called the dumping a
"misguided venture," said the county is ready to proceed with the enhancement
portion of the project on the adjoining parcel.
"We have taken that acreage out of
agriculture production in anticipation of creating new habitat for the snake,"
he said.
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