Saving Putah Creek Road -- Tons of dirt will shore up Vacaville, Winters linkFairfield Daily Republic - October 29, 2005 By Barry Eberling Saving Putah Creek Road -- Tons of dirt will shore up Vacaville, Winters link Fairfield Daily Republic – 10/30/05 By Barry Eberling, staff writer WINTERS - A din caused by heavy construction equipment moving 20,000 cubic yards of dirt signals rebirth for both a short stretch of Putah Creek and Putah Creek Road. “It's the biggest project we've ever undertaken,” said Rich Marovich, who oversees the health of the creek for the Lower Putah Creek Coordinating Committee. That dirt is being used to rebuild an eroding creekbank that threatens to undermine the road. If this small section of the road tumbles 15 feet into the creek below, it would sever a key rural link between Vacaville and Winters. The project is doing more than saving Putah Creek Road. Rebuilding the bank is expensive - the project costs $546,000 - but it helps preserve a stretch of creek where the yellow warbler and Swainson's hawk visit and salmon spawn. “It's the best bird habitat anywhere on Putah Creek,” Marovich said. Lower Putah Creek runs about 28 miles from Monticello Dam in the hills to the flatlands near Davis. It separates Solano and Yolo counties. The short section where the creek is threatening Putah Creek Road is at the southern border of Winters, at the confluence with Dry Creek. The problem started in 1997, when the creek's low-flow channel jumped from the middle of the 600-foot-wide creekbed to the side, up against the 15-foot-tall, wall-like bank. Over the years, the new channel eroded some 30 lateral feet of the bank. A non-native plant called arundo created this rogue channel. The reed grows more than 30 feet tall and is found in thick clumps. It is clogging up creekbeds all over California. In this case, the arundo blocked the creek's regular low-flow channel. The big rains of 1997 caused water to surge down Putah Creek. When the water ran up against the wall of arundo, it shifted course and started digging out a new channel. Each winter, the storm-fed creek erodes the creekbank and gets closer and closer to Putah Creek Road. Time to save the road is running out. The eroded bank is within a few feet of the pavement. A few more big storms could send the road tumbling down. There's a simple, time-proven solution: Bring in some concrete riprap to shore up the failing bank. But it would make the bank look like something found in a city. Putah Creek has friends who didn't want to see this habitat altered by riprap. The Lower Putah Creek Coordinating Committee was born in the late 1990s out of an environmental lawsuit. It brings together the Davis-based Putah Creek Council, Solano County Water Agency, University of California, Davis, and city of Davis. The committee put together the restoration plans and stitched together grants to pay for it. Work got under way in late summer. The project will solve not only the Putah Creek Road problem, but also stop erosion on Dry Creek. Rebuilding the bank takes a massive amount of dirt. The project got some of the dirt by excavating the original low-flow channel. It's also digging out a 1-acre pond near the creek. This dirt is close at hand and doesn't need to be trucked in. “That's going to help us keep the cost down on the overall project,” Marovich said. Finally, the project is getting dirt that got excavated 50 years ago to create the Putah Canal South. This is the concrete-lined canal that delivers Lake Berryessa reservoir water to Solano County cities and farms. The excavated dirt has sat near the canal all of these decades. But rebuilding the bank and recreating the old low-flow channel will all be for naught if the arundo returns. The Lower Putah Creek Coordinating Council has killed most of it with herbicide. Arundo is a hard weed to kill off. “We got 99 percent control with the first application,” Marovich said. “The 1 percent has grown back to maybe 10 percent of what it was.” So more arundo eradication work will follow. “We have to be persistent until it's completely knocked out,” Marovich said. The creek bank rebuilding project should be finished in a few weeks. That will be just in time. Then the rainy season is due to begin, perhaps bringing big storms that cause gully-washers in Putah Creek. For the first time in eight years, the water rushing down the creek will be in a channel toward the middle of the creekbed. No longer will Putah Creek Road be in danger. #
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