$2 million for Clear Lake water quality improvement included in state budget

The state’s new $125 billion budget contains a fresh glimmer of hope for restoration efforts at Clear Lake, which suffers from mercury contamination and algae growth that perennially afflicts Lake County’s primary tourist destination.

The budget, signed by the governor late last month, includes $2 million in a separate piece of legislation, which, if approved, would create a “blue ribbon” committee to bring together a coalition of scientists, elected officials, tribal members, environmentalists and others to study the ancient lake’s problems and map out solutions.

The bill’s author, Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, said the slated funding gives her confidence the bill will be signed into law this year. It still needs approval from at least two committees and the full Senate before it goes to the governor’s desk for a signature.

Lake County officials are buoyed by the bill’s funding.

Supervisor Jim Steele, a former Fish and Wildlife scientist and manager, called the proposal a “breakthrough … that I hope will change the funding support approach” for Clear Lake.

There have already been extensive studies and millions of dollars spent on Clear Lake in the past, but Assembly Bill 707 seeks to coordinate the studies and come up with an overall plan to tackle the problems. The approach would include input from local stakeholders as well as federal and state officials.

Efforts to combat threats to the 68-square-mile lake, including the specter of an exotic mussel invasion, have included three failed county tax measures since 2012 aimed at improving water quality, an ongoing federal cleanup of a mercury mine and a long-awaited wetlands restoration project.

The estimated $50 million restoration project is slated to return about 1,600 acres on the northwestern shore to wetlands by knocking down more than 14 miles of levees, many of which don’t measure up to safety standards.

The so-called Middle Creek Project, launched more than a decade ago, has been slowed by funding shortfalls and landowners who have not wanted to sell.

There also have been proposals to restore other wetlands that, combined with the Middle Creek project, would bring back more than half of the nearly 8,000 acres of wetlands lost or damaged in the 480-square-mile Clear Lake basin in the past century. The wetlands would filter runoff and streams that flow into Clear Lake, reducing mercury contamination and nutrients that promote the algae overgrowth, according to a UC Davis study conducted over 30 years and that concluded in 1994, Steele noted.

The algal blooms clog waterways and produce a noxious smell that can scare away tourists and force area residents to keep their windows closed.

In 2016, Lake County’s visitor spending was $156  million, much of it attributable to the lake’s draw, according to a state report and local officials.

Steele and other county officials believe it would be easier to obtain additional funding for the lake if multiple agencies and groups focus their energies on a common goal.

“Clear Lake, as the oldest warm-water, large, natural, highly nutrient rich ecosystem in North America is worth the investment,” Steele said.

You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 707-462-6473 or glenda.anderson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MendoReporter.