Pescadero residents battling state agencies to save threatened fish

Locals have spent every winter for the past 15 years watching silvery steelhead trout die in Pescadero Marsh. Now they are tired of waiting for state officials to step in and are preparing for a major fight — in court.

“We’re now 15 years in and the problem is still unsolved. When the system is in utter collapse, you don’t study that. You take action,” said Ronda Azevado Lucas, an attorney representing a group of Pescadero anglers and concerned citizens who are about to file a lawsuit accusing state resources agencies of abdicating their responsibility to protect sensitive fish and amphibians under the California Endangered Species Act.

The group recently launched a nonprofit, the Coastal Alliance for Species Enhancement, to raise money to fix Pescadero Marsh. Recently, it notified California State Parks, California Department of Fish and Game and the California Natural Resources Agency to expect a lawsuit over their “complacency” in the face of evidence that man-made changes to the marsh have resulted in the annual fish kills.

An unknown number of juvenile steelhead suffocate each year in the brackish waters of the marsh when rains force open the sandbar at the mouth of the lagoon and the ocean flows in like a fire hose, mixing layers of freshwater and saltwater. Scientists believe this mixing stirs up toxic hydrogen sulfide and robs the water of oxygen the fish require to breathe.

Time is of the essence for one of the last steelhead runs in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties. The marsh also hosts the largest population of threatened California red-legged frogs in the state, and the Pescadero group asserts that increasing salinity levels have substantially hurt the frog population as well as the endangered San Francisco garter snake and the tidewater goby.

The endangered Central Coast Coho Salmon disappeared from Pescadero and Butano creeks a few years ago, which feed into the marsh.

“The frogs, the snakes and gobies — they’ll come back. But once the fish are gone, they won’t come back. They’re extinct,” said Steve Simms, a local fisher and a driving force behind the lawsuit.

Everyone acknowledges something went wrong in the 1990s, when State Parks, which owns the marsh, re-engineered the water flow with levees, culverts and water gates. Many of these fixes quickly became defective but were left in place.

Juvenile steelhead grow up feeding in the marsh estuary before going out to sea when the sandbar breaks. Most seasonal lagoons have broken open by now, but this sandbar forms in the fall and remains unbroken until winter. Aquatic plants begin to decompose, which affects dissolved oxygen levels in the water. In 1995, locals witnessed the first steelhead die-off.

This lawsuit will attempt to tie the actions 15 years ago to the California Endangered Species Act. It focuses on the Coho salmon and the San Francisco garter snake, since they are state-protected species. Simms hinted that a follow-up lawsuit could target the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which protects the red-legged frog under federal law.

Lucas, the lawyer for the group, said state agencies have the power to enforce the Endangered Species Act against State Parks but have avoided doing that for political reasons.

“I really think this is about trying to let a sister agency off the hook. If it were a private citizen who owned this marsh, someone would very likely be in jail or definitely facing a cease-and-desist order,” Lucas said.

Internal correspondence obtained by the legal team through the Freedom of Information Act shows that the Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Department of Fish and Game officials agree that they would like to restore Pescadero Marsh to a freshwater lagoon system, but they are stymied by a difference of opinion with State Parks, which wants to avoid re-engineering the marsh.

“We want make sure our agencies are on the same page. They’re welcome from my perspective to propose something. I’d love to hear a proposal from them,” said Krissy Atkinson, an environmental scientist with Fish and Game.