You are here:
SAN FRANCISCO ESTUARY PROJECT COMPREHENSIVE CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT PLAN
Citation:
SAN FRANCISCO ESTUARY PROJECT COMPREHENSIVE CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT PLAN. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., 1994.
Description:
The Estuary, a significant natural resource, San Francisco Bay and the Delta combine to form the West Coast's largest estuary. The Estuary conveys the waters of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers to the Pacific Ocean. It encompasses roughly 1,600 square miles, drains over 40 percent of the state (60,000 square miles), and contains about five million acre-feet of water at mean tide. The Estuary watershed provides drinking water to twenty million Californians and irrigates 4.5 million acres of farmland. The Estuary also hosts a rich diversity of aquatic life. Each year, two-thirds of the state's salmon pass through the Bay and Delta, as do nearly half of the waterfowl and shorebirds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. In addition, Estuary waters enable the nation's fourth-largest metropolitan region to pursue many activities, including shipping, fishing, recreation, and commerce. The San Francisco Estuary Project, a Cooperative Approach to Environmentally Sound Management Growing public concern for the health of the Bay and Delta led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) to establish the San Francisco Estuary Project (SFEP or Project) in 1987. The Project, part of the U.S. EPA's National Estuary Program, is a five-year cooperative effort to promote more effective management of the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary and to restore and maintain the Estuary's water quality and natural resources. The Project is jointly sponsored by the U.S. EPA and the State of California. It is financed by federal appropriations under the Clean Water Act and matching funds from the state and local entities. Managing a resource as important and complex as the Estuary is a challenging task. The compelling need for environmental protection must he weighed against competing uses of Estuary waters and resources. To address this challenge, the Project brought together over one hundred representatives from the private and public sectors, including government, industry, business, and environmental interests, as well as elected officials from all twelve Bay-Delta counties. After five years, the Project's cooperative public-private partnership has reached its goal of developing a Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) for the Estuary. The Plan A Blueprint for Estuary Conservation and Restoration The CCMP presents a blueprint to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Bay and Delta. It seeks to achieve high standards of water quality; to maintain an appropriate indigenous population of fish, shellfish, and wildlife; to support recreational activities; and to protect the beneficial uses of the Estuary. For the purposes of the CCMP, restoration implies improving the health of the Estuary. Rather than attempting to completely restore the Estuary to its historical state, the CCMP strives to maintain, protect, and enhance the ecological integrity of the Estuary within the given urban context. The CCMP attempts to regain as much of the altered or destroyed wetlands as possible, to establish the highest restoration or target goals, to ensure continuance of beneficial uses, and to generally provide a sustainable ecosystem. To develop the CCMP, the Project's Management Conference identified five critical program areas of environmental concern: 1) decline of biological resources; 2) pollutants; 3) freshwater diversions and altered flow regime; 4) dredging waterway modification; and 5) intensified land use. Subcommittees then produced status and trends reports that summarized the current state of the Estuary's resources. Next, the subcommittees prepared recommendations that became the basis for a CCMP Action Plan. The Management Committee reviewed a working draft of the Plan in November. 1991. The Management Committee then met frequently during the first seven months of 1992. Through facilitated, consensus building discussions, the Management Committee developed a Draft CCMP, which was released for public comment in August of 1992. Finally, the Management Committee incorporated public comments on the Draft CCMP and finalized the CCMP. The Management Committee unanimously adopted the final CCMP at its March 31. 1993, meeting.