Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report for the Beneficial Reuse of Excavated Material in Tidal Marsh Restoration Project

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February 20, 2024

Ann Calnan
Environmental Lead
Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority Environmental Programs Office
3331 North First Street, B-2
San Jose, CA 95134-1927

RE: Beneficial Reuse Project

The Sierra Club’s Bay Alive Campaign welcomes this opportunity to comment on the Notice of Preparation of a Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report for the Beneficial Reuse of Excavated Material in Tidal Marsh Restoration Project (NOP). We do so on behalf of tens of thousands of Sierra Club supporters in the Loma Prieta Chapter. Our Bay Alive Campaign advocates to protect the health of our communities, our wildlife and our Earth by promoting living shorelines, healthy waters, and just, equitable, and economically beneficial solutions to sea level rise in the San Francisco Bay Area. We advocate for the multi-layered benefits of natural and nature-based adaptation to sea level rise, for regional coordination, and for equitable strategies to build community resilience. We contribute to plans, guidance, and actions under consideration at local, regional, and State levels. In addition, we provide Bay-educational webinars by topic-expert presenters for advocates, community leaders and city/county staff and elected officials,1 and train new advocates through our eight to twelve week Bay Advocate Programs.

We support the project concept as a multi-benefit, innovative approach to address sediment needs for wetland restoration and sea level rise resilience, and particularly its value for sustaining wildlife habitat on the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge. However, we are concerned that the soil acceptance criteria in the Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP) may not be ecologically appropriate for the proposed use of sediment in this setting. We offer the comments below in the spirit of collaboration to strengthen the environmental review and assure long term project efficacy and sustainable benefits for Bay shoreline communities and ecosystems.

  1. The scope of Hazards and Hazardous Materials review must include potential ecological impacts from fill materials.

    The NOP section on Hazards and Hazardous Materials only indicates the intention to study exposure to hazardous waste contamination during construction and refers only to mitigation of impacts on hazardous materials. Our primary concern is the impacts of fill containing hazardous materials on the wetland and its biota. The EIS/EIR should identify and mitigate such impacts.

    Also, the CEQA definition of “hazardous materials” of concern for workers and residents may be inappropriate to identify the full range of contaminants of concern for wetland biota.
     
  2. Acceptance criteria must be appropriate for sensitive ecological habitats.

    The NOP indicates the project will “ensure that all excavated material placed into the former salt production ponds meets the criteria that ensures the material will not pose a risk to wildlife or water quality”2 by hewing to the contaminant limits contained in the QAPP. With the exception of total hydrocarbon components and volatile organic compounds (VOC), the QAPP’s environmental screening levels (ESL) are based on those in the San Francisco Bay RWQCB’s Beneficial Reuse of Dredged Materials: Sediment Screening and Testing Guidelines (RWQCB 2000).3 However, the most recent (2019) RWQCB ESL guidance states (emphasis added):

    ESLs may not be adequately protective for certain sites. For example, they should not be used at sites where physical conditions or exposure scenarios substantially differ from those assumed in development of the ESLs, thereby posing a risk to human or ecological receptors. In addition, the ESLs do not apply to sediment or sensitive ecological habitats (such as wetlands or endangered-species habitats). The need for a detailed human health or ecological risk assessment should be evaluated on a site-by-site basis for areas where significant concerns may exist.

    ESLs are not derived for sediment because Regional Water Board staff requires that sediment be evaluated based on sediment chemistry, toxicity tests, and condition of thebenthic community in a multiple lines of evidence approach.4

    RWQCB ESLs are not typically intended to be protective for aquatic organisms or other wildlife, but rather as an indicator for risks from human exposure to soils and groundwater left in place at a contaminated site. As such, ESLs may lack appropriate parameters needed to assess impacts on wetland biota, such as results of toxicity tests.

    One possible source to consider for acceptance levels is the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Region III benchmarks for remediation of marine sediments5 used at Superfund sites. Another more recent source of guidance is the California Sediment Quality Objectives, approved by EPA under the Clean Water Act, that are designed to protect estuarine biota and human health.6

    Selected acceptance criteria also should include limits on PFAS, not available in either of the above resources.
     
  3. The analytical methods references specified in the QAPP are very outdated.

    In many cases, different methods will need to be used to obtain more sensitive detection limits. Method detection limits should be determined by the laboratory for solids, in mg/kg, not those used for water analysis, which are in mg/L.
     
  4. The frequency and method of sampling specified in the QAPP may need to be re-evaluated based on more recent guidance from USEPA and Cal EPA.
     
  5. General Comments
    • Acceptance criteria should be established at a programmatic level, not deferred to the individual projects, and should characterize the sediment appropriate to specific uses (e.g., mercury containment versus preparation for restoration efforts).
    • Acceptance criteria for the fill will need to recognize that there is no such thing as pristine soil when it comes to inorganic elements. All soils contain metals, and sometimes those metals will exceed screening benchmarks based on background geochemical makeup. The program and project plans should determine the levels of mercury and lead currently present in the pond sediments, and ensure that at a minimum, the new fill is cleaner.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit scoping comments for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report for the Beneficial Reuse of Excavated Material in Tidal Marsh Restoration Project. We look forward to continued engagement as the Project proceeds through the environmental review process.


Sincerely,

Jennifer Chang Hetterly
Bay Alive Coordinator
Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter

Cc James Eggers, Executive Director, Sierra Club Loma Prieta
Gita Dev, Conservation Chair, Sierra Club Loma Prieta

1 See for example: https://www.sierraclub.org/sf-bay-alive/sea-level-rise-webinar-why-we-need-nature-based-adaptation

2 Notice of Preparation of a Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report for the Beneficial Reuse of Excavated Material in Tidal Marsh Restoration Project, page 6

3 https://govtribe.com/file/government-file/attachment-2-master-qapp-2018-final-dot-pdf, page 11

4 https://canvas.eee.uci.edu/courses/35369/files/14524449, section 12-5

5 https://www.epa.gov/risk/marine-sediment-screening-benchmarks

6 https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/bptcp/docs/sediment/sed_qual_provs.pdf