The Resolution tonight has my full support and should receive a unanimous vote. This project is certainly completed. You completed the heck out of it. I’m unclear why the council asked staff to weigh in on the historic photos discovered by Worth A Dam but you did so I wanted to make sure you had my comments as well.

This first photo, never printed in any newspaper but discussed in the LA Times, shows the de-watered creek in 2000. By itself it refutes the major argument. The Cal Engineering Sept 22 report said the emergency conditions were caused by the widening separation of the bank from the wall.

Obviously, based on this photo there was no bank along the retaining wall historically, so the fact that the soil was separating from the wall is no indication of any urgent situation.

In this photo you can also see that there is a tree planted at the location of the largest crack inside the Bertola’s property. Some of the crack is visible in the photo, as is all of the most likely culprit.

However, the most alarming evidence comes with this 2^nd photo, taken in fall of 2001 showing the replanting efforts. Looking along the base is clear that the ridge we were assuming was a footing is in fact sheet pile and concrete. Your recent staff report addresses saying this is an un-engineered wall installed by maintenance that covers a short section for which there are no historical plans. Does that mean maintenance had access to a pile driver? If there are no plans how do you know the wall was un-engineered? Most importantly, This “short section” covers some 70 feet of the Bertola’s wall, which is only 120 feet total. It appears to have concrete poured behind it, and our fluvial geomorphologist confirmed that she saw concrete in exposed patches so that makes sense. Knowing that there are also four pieces of sheet pile nearest the bridge, 2/3 of wall shows existing sheet pile, so it is reasonable to assume it is also along the places where we cannot see as well.

What does this mean? It means that Martinez spent half a million dollars to build a sheetpile wall with concrete in front of a sheetpile wall with concrete.

I didn’t say this at the meeting…but I will say it here with a special thank you to Mr. Colbert:

Knowing how destructive our beavers can be, do you really think two layers is enough?

Silver Lining Alert:

Last night staff reports spent nearly thirty minutes addressing issues raised on this website and put forward by Worth A Dam. Tim Tucker presented an update on the city photos we discovered and his best understanding of them, and Dave Scola was asked to discuss mother beaver’s eye injury and even consulted Skip Lisle and Mary Tappel about it. They certainly would never have been aware of either of these issues if it weren’t for this website and Worth A Dam’s hard work. This is what is known in political circles as “setting the frame”. The city had to respond to us, in instead of the way round. Maybe it’s a November 7th anniversary present, or maybe it’s the influence of the Beaver Moon. Either way, its worth pausing to inhale.

Martinez Historical Photo September 2001

Lie One: The bank separating from the wall creates an emergency.

Lie Two: There Is no foundation or footing to the wall.

Lie Three: The cracks are evidence of new beaver damage.

I don’t know much about baseball. Remind me again, what is it that happens after three strikes? You know the more I look at the footing along the bottom, the more I recognize that pattern. Click on the picture to zoom in. Where have I seen it before? It’s kind of like crennulations. Kind of like…um…THIS

Don’t tell me that we spent half a million dollars to install sheet piling in front of sheet piling.  Well I guess we did, this helps me understand the staff report much better.

Staff believes the photo shows an un-engineered sheet pile wall along a short section of the Bertola wall. This work was apparently done by City maintenance staff during the original channel construction. No records of the design of this section of the wall or supporting structural calculations have been found.

If no records exist how do we know it was “un-engineered”.  What exactly does a “short section” mean? Looks like at least half to me. How far does it go down? No wonder they wanted the area filled up with concrete so that no one would ever find the secret wall built behind another wall.

I try to keep the focus on beavers here and not on the absurdities of my life, but this came into our home recently and has been making typing very challenging.

Did you ever have one of these? I believe they are also called “time-eaters”, “furniture destroyers”and “finger-biters”. They have all the charm of a new born baby with agile long legs and very sharp teeth. We are in the early stages of acceptance a la Kubler-Ross. First there’s denial that your life has forever changed and nothing will be the same again. I briefly touched the Anger stage this morning when my foot stepped in something unmentionable on the carpet.

What does this have to do with beavers? Well McKenzie was a shelter puppy, her litter mates were all put down and came to us so young she still had part of her umbilical cord attached. She arrived with what our vet called a “heavy intestinal load” of worms, coccidia, and giardia. I just looked them up and was reminded of giardia’s “nickname”.

BEAVER FEAVER!

No she didn’t get this from a beaver, and when people get giardia from beaver ponds it is because people have put it into the water first. Way back in the early days I was cautioned by our beaver friend Mike Callahan about Waterboards and their fear of Giardiasis. It was one of the first things I researched before my days on the subcommittee. A history of misinformation has sometimes blamed beavers for this disease, instead of realizing that they are carriers of our (and our pets) infections. Kenzie will ride through the proper treatments and modern medicine will set her straight very soon, but in the mean time I just had to smile at the fates.

When I first saw the beavers I was with my adult lab Calypso. She would lay on the bridge patiently while I filmed strange furry things in the water that were not her. She was a gentle soul, a beloved companion, and the most popular patient at any pet clinic. In her younger days she loved to fish by standing in a shallow school of minnows and leaping upon one that caught her eye. Caly died this spring after a very long and lucky life, and Kenzie will become the new friend to the beavers eventually.

To get things started on the right foot (paw?) she found the beaver chew on the porch yesterday and decided to make a few gnaw marks of her own. So far so good.

Just in case you are worried that the historic photo reported in the LA Times caused a crisis of confidence for our intrepid city entourage, be comforted that there is another resolution on the calendar for Wednesday’s meeting. This is the “Willing All Suspicions Silenced Order” otherwise known as the “WAS SO!” amendment. The city will vote to say that despite the chilling effect of evidence to the contrary, residents should continue to believe that they made the right decision.

This follows the “This is an emergency resolution on October 1st, and the “It’s still an emergency resolution on October 15.” It goes on to say

“Staff believes the photo show an un-engineered sheet pile wall along a short section of the Bertola wall. This work was apparently done by City maintenance staff during the original channel construction. No records of the design of this section of the wall or supporting structural calculations have been found.”

Yes we know about the four pieces of sheetpile. Staff had access to a pile driver? And can someone explain “un-engineered” to me? Do you mean the city engineer was never even consulted? It gets better:

“During our recent construction the City Inspector and the City consulting biologist observed and photographed sections of the Bertola wall showing no foundations. in addition the property owner has reaffirmed that he believes the Bertola wall was built without a foundation.”

Based on the photo in question it would be difficult to “observe and photograph” the foundation since it would be underneath the collapsing bank. As for the beliefs of the property owner, let me not question anyone’s faith. Just tell me one thing, does this mean you can’t see the footing in the picture? What do you think that square ledge is at the bottom?

“The recommendation to construct the project was based on evidence of significant recent erosion along the east bank of Alhambra Creek between Escobar Street and Marina Vista and the observation of recent cracks in the Bertola Restaurant retaining wall. A geotechical engineer hired by the property owner and one hired by the City drew the same conclusions that building. retaining wall and property along this section of the creek were in immanent [sic] risk of damage or failure this winter.”

Perhaps this isn’t a typo at all. Immanent is defined by websters as “in-dwelling” from the latin “en manare” meaning to remain within. Dictionary.com adds the enviable philosphical definition “Taking place within the mind of the subject and having no effect outside it.” (or relevance to?) To translate: don’t be confused by the notion that erosion on the east bank is irrelevant if the 1999 photo shows there was no bank there to begin with. Pay no attention to the crack in the wall, which is visible, and never mind about that large tree there in the photo right at the crack which is no longer standing. It would be foolish to imply that roots had anything to do with this.

While an emergency may not have been imminent, this decision was Immanent. It will remain despite all evidence questioning its wisdom.

WHEREAS: the city of Martinez has heretofore entered into a contract with Hess Concrete Construction Co. Inc, for certain work on the Emergency Creek Bank Stabilization, Alhambra Creek Escobar Street to Marina Vista an the Public Works Director has recommended acceptance of said work of improvement as completed in accordance with plans, specifications and approved change orders and correction lists, and in accordance with the final inspection of the Deputy Director of Public Works.

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, by the City Council of Martinez that said work is hereby accepted as completed on this 19th day of November.

Okay. I agree. It’s completed. Explain to me why you even had to talk about the photograph to establish its doneness? The report is authored by Don Salts and Tim Tucker. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Mr. Salts authored this resolution to defend the good name of his immediate boss whose shoes he plans to fill one day soon. This is a CYA resolution, because regardless of the grainy photograph, everyone who was on staff 9 years ago should remember that this bank had no soil and just an exposed wall. The truth is that I wasn’t even going to bother with the second photograph because this was such a DONE, COMPLETED, OVER deal. Now the city has prompted me to march down and get the one taken directly opposite the crack, so I have something exciting for Share-and-Tell Wednesday evening.

Last night I was looking up at our ghostly full moon spectacle and wondering what it was called. Everyone knows about the Hunter’s moon, and the Harvest moon, so what was this? Turns out this second moon after the fall equinox is named after our favorite thing: “The Beaver Moon”. The Farmers’ Almanac says in its unpoetic way that it is so named as a reminder to set our beaver traps before the ponds freeze, so we’ll have fur for the winter. Other kinder interpretations suggest that it is the time for beavers to get busier and lay up food before the ice sets.

I’m thinking the full beaver moon would be a great time for an evening beaver festival. Hot cider and christmas lights along the creek to visit the dams in succession. Maybe a start to the shopping season in some downtown boutiques. Night lamps on creek activity and maybe some folk music and a bonfire. Sounds good to me. Happy Beaver Moon everyone!

Oh and woodpecker update: Our feathered friends have cracked the media barrier and made Gary Bogue and the Chronicle today, channels 7 and 5 last night, and the LA times and CC Times. Apparently now there’s discussion that they “might just kill a couple to scare the others away”.

Huh?

How will killing a couple scare others away? Will this be done in a public forum where all the woodpeckers will be made to watch? How will the not-shot birds find out what happened to their compatriots? Twitter? Honestly, do they plan to post the severed red-heads on pikes all around the border to ward off unwanted visitors?

When settlers first touched the shores of North America, there were an estimated 60 to 400 million beavers. Think about that, over two million beavers in every state, which means they were in every creek and lake and stream they could reach. Their fur was so desirable and their habits so easy to predict that by the early 1900’s hunting had dropped the population as low as 100,000. In many parts of North America there were no beavers at all.

That’s a dramatic change, but lets think for a moment about what life was like when all these furry wetlands engineers scurried around the continent. They terraced every meandering creek with dams, caught the water and held it for drier times, and slowed down periods of high flow. In fact the arid western territories weren’t so arid when there were beavers to control the water. The creeks were shallower and changed their banks more often, moving the rich deposit from one side to the other. The soil along the banks made rich habitat for trees to grow healthy and green. Just like in Egypt along the Nile, the rich sediment allowed for hugely productive crops. I have even heard that our pioneers could never have been as successful if beavers had not conditioned the soil for them.

We may not really think about it, but creeks are changing things. The move their path, they meander, they develop. As America grew more populated, we stopped allowing our creeks to change. Creeks were borders, boundaries and markers. That was someone’s land they were meandering onto or away from. We may have continued to let our cattle roam but we started to put our creeks in fences. Riprap, concrete walls, steel piling. We narrowed the options for our creeks, and nearly exterminated their caretakers.

So what happened? Creeks are changing things. If the can’t meander from side to side, that doesn’t mean they don’t evolve. Since they can’t go out they go down. Undercutting began across the continent. Our channels grew deeper and faster and the exposed soil thinner and harder to support vegetation. When I walked our Alhambra Creek with the fluvial geomorphologist Laurel Collins, she pointed out several examples of undercutting in our bed. Development gave the creek no where to go but down, and that means that the flow gets steeper and faster in hard weather, hence the flooding we see every few winters.

When a creek undercuts it is harder to store water, harder to replenish soil and grow crops. Drier areas begin to suffer and wetter areas get overwhelmed. Animals that depend on the creek are also affected, and the game you might have hunted to put food on your table moves farther to find water as well. I started thinking more seriously about this when I read Eric Collier’s book “Three Against the Wilderness” about re-introducing beavers in Canada. He wrote in particular about a complicated waterway that fed several farms. Without beavers to keep the water in a series of dams, the entire area was subject to draught. He hoped anxiously that when they returned they would be able to keep the water during high flow and eek it out through the summer months.

This confused me because our dams wash out so easily during high flow. A little review has shown that any time we receive more than a half inch of rain over 24 hours we’ve had a full or partial washout. So how did these Canadian beavers manage their magic? Are our beavers just slackers, or not as talented at dam maintenance?

No. The answer came from a conversation with Igor Skaredoff who attended the beaver conference in Oregon where they are reintroducing beavers to increase the salmon population. They noticed the dam washout problem as well and decided that beavers need a little structural help to keep the water back. They provide reinforcement to dams, and a foundation starter. Why? Because the landscape has changed since the 1900’s and the writing of Eric Collier’s book. Undercutting has made streams faster and deeper, and beavers, hard workers though they are, can’t keep up.

As in so many ways, mankind has made their work harder. Now that streams are deeper and faster there is less rich soil deposit, and that means less treescape, and less habitat for beavers to feed. At the very time when humans need their dam building to eek out water in drought and minimize water during high flow, our creeks are less able to take care of their needs, and less hospitable to their efforts.

American history is inextricably linked to the beaver. We may as well figure out how to get along.

Our friends in the media did their part to raise awareness. Did that reporter actually say “no one has been harmed yet?” Am I dreaming? Check out the reports here and here: we expect something from the SF Chronicle tomorrow.

UPDATIER:

Friends at MDAS enlist support. Worth A Dam contacts media buddies to see if we can get news cameras on site. Lindsay Museum says they have offered alternatives and support, and have many volunteers who live there and are dismayed by the decision. Following letter sent to Rossmoor paper.

UPDATE:

Just found out Gary Bogue will be speaking next week at Rossmoor, maybe he can mention something about a more sensible woodpecker control plan? Also heard from Robert Carlton of the Rossmoor Nature Association, who said that this was being driven by a small group of residents who have pushed the board for this action, and not the management. He did say he reads this website daily and is a friend of the beavers. Lets hope our beavers can help his woodpeckers.

He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. Jack London

Every now and then I think of this quote when I hear the plaintive beaver vocalizations as they communicate to each other. Certainly it is nothing like Buck’s fierce, existential, howl, but it is an unmistakable portal into another world: a deeply social world in which the other is an extension of the self, and even isolation is commual. Sometimes when I hear it I feel like it claims me as a guardian, keeping watch over the beaver’s difficult lives because I can. Sometimes I just want to turn to the person nearest me and create a parallel sharing: “did you hear that?”. Always I am aware that it is rare and precious, eavesdropping on the call of the wild.

Yesterday I got an email from beaver friend CB who wrote sadly about the death of one of the two adult white Geese who have become Starbuck’s Sentinels. She compassionately wondered what would happen to the other goose, now that its mate was gone, and wondered whether something could be done to move it back to the duck pond. I replied that I thought this particular pair of geese had all the skills necessary to survive, and that even alone, the widow would find its way back to the crowd if that was the right thing for it to do. CB’s kind attention to the geese and the beavers is a touching reminder of our capacity to answer the call of the wild with our own voice of compassion.

I was wondereing if you knew about the demise of one of the white geese outside of Starbucks on Main st..While the remaining mate called greetings to us and ate moldy bread, surrounded by beer bottles and plastic cups, she drank from water slick with oil. And I’ve been worrying about whether she is safe there by herself, or may be better off trying to survive at the waterfront with the other geese.Of course, she could go there on her own, but this is her feeding spot that she’s been inhabiting for awhile.I guess I’m just afraid she will suffer a similar fate as her mate, and wish there was something I could do to help. They were a symbol to me of the burgeoning life the beavers brought to the creek, and brought more of a sense of community downtown, with children gathering to feed them and say hi, and people of all ages enjoying their presencse. We are also great lovers of the beavers and with the long summer days, it was easier to visit the geese on our downtown strolls, and swing by hoping to see the beavers if we were out late enough.One of my daughters first 30 words was BEAVERS! She has seen them and gets excited everytime we’re downtown hoping to see them. Now it will be easier with darkness falling so early. They came right around the same time we moved to Martinez, so they are somewhat of a personal icon for us, their babes coming around the same time mine did. I’m so happy they’re doing well and have new kits and have brought new life to the creek.They are a blessing to Martinez and I’m thankful to all who have helped them.

Sincerely, CB

Lastly a sad call to the wild from Rossmoor where they have received permission from Fish and Game to exterminate 50 Acorn Woodpeckers which are burying their favorite treasure in unwelcomed places. Exaggerated costs are being used to justify the killing. I have to wonder, does F&G ever say no? The shooting is slated to happen this week. Write your local paper to get the word out, give them a call at (925) 988-7682 and stop this slaughter, or get your video camera and see if you can get some images on you tube. I can imagine a sister “save the woodpecker” sight…maybe Worth A Nut?

Obviously, no one other than conspiracy theorists would think that the fact that it appeared on the blog on the 29th, and in the paper on the 9th, is confusing. Surely only JFK whackos could be dismayed by the final “Seeking Council” column on affordable housing appearing on election Tuesday, when it was slated for the Thursday before.

Still, I’m not sure how one person making a bad decision constitutes a conspiracy. 

I don’t know why the story wasn’t run before the election. I know for a fact it was received, but it may have been mislaid, forgotten, or shuffled out of site. I know that I can do more to followup when I’m not siting 8 hours a day on bridge watch before going to work. Maybe it will never happen again, and its a complete accident that it happened now. I’d feel more reassured if my letter, (unfounded accusation that it was), or any of the mysterious trio, was printed along with the rebuttal.

In the meantime, we are told to expect a column Thursday on the bank stabilization project. Since the Gazette is reading this blog at the moment, (to find what offensive material they might need to react to next), allow me to suggest what will happen when you contact councilman Ross and the city manager. Ross’ response will likely be the same as for Bay City Media, in which he says the bank of Bertola’s was never  the concern. You may want to review the engineering reports to check if that’s true. I have highlighted the relevant passages here. If confronted that this is not what was said in court, the next excuse will be that this job was planned all along for that wall but the city ran out of money in 2000. To verify that you would have to get the city plans from the engineer, because to my knowledge no one’s ever seen them. Actually, I wouldn’t bother because the argument was never over whether this was planned for the wall, but whether it was an EMERGENCY that could affect downtown businesses if delayed. Finally, it would be useful to go back through the special assessment tax records and find out what the property owner paid in 1999 towards the flood project. I’m sure readers would like to know the Return On Investment he received.

Here’s some nice beaver followup in the meantime.

The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
 The hill-side’s dew-pearled;
 The lark’s on the wing;
 The snail’s on the thorn;
 God’s in his Heaven -
 All’s right with the world!
          Robert Browning