about the past...
Time
Line
Land
Use History of Humboldt Bay
History
of the Arcata Marsh Project
Achievements
Founders
of the Arcata Marsh Project
List of
Publications
here in the present...
Performance
Data on Marsh
Projects
in Progress
into the future...
Goals
LAND USE HISTORY OF THE ARCATA MARSH
The surrounding land of Humboldt Bay has felt the footsteps of many men and has changed with the needs of its inhabitants. Native to the marshland, the Wiyot Indians flourished in a balanced relationship they sustained with the earth for thousands of years. Unfortunately, their history in this area ended with the migration of settlers who began to mold the land to their own needs in the late 1800's. A pilgrimage of gold miners discovered the land in 1849, and by 1860, over half of the Native Americans of Humboldt Bay perished from foreign disease, or cold-blooded slaughter. The 450 remaining Wiyot people were relocated to the Klamath reservation, north of their homeland.
Alterations of the bay's ecosystem started about 1870 when settlers suffocated the wetland with dikes and floodgates to prepare an agricultural base for farming. By 1900, Humboldt Bay's surface area and its web of sloughs had been reduced from 27,000 to 17,000 acres. At the turn of the century California's first railway was built, running through a two mile wharf off the shore of Arcata which connected northern commerce with San Francisco. Besides the fire in 1908 which burned part of the railroad tracks, the railroad operated into the 1920's.
Originally the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary site was completely salt marsh, however through the passage of time it has experienced multiple changes. For instance, the logging industry has left it's skeleton of cement building encasements littered through the marsh site. A log deck constructed for lumber storage in 1945 was located at the present day George Allen Marsh and has since been removed. Acute devastation of the redwood forest (east of the wetland) resulted in the construction of two lumber mills owned by a local family in the 1940's. After the fall of the lumber industry, the lumber mills were donated to the city and their site is observed now by the appropriately named Butcher's Slough.
Continuing the slow destruction of a functionally and ecologically sound area, 1964 marked the diking off of 40 acres of the Arcata Bay for an ocean side landfill. This location is now the Arcata Marsh. By the 1970's not only had the landfill contaminated the neighboring land, but toxic leachate was reported in Humboldt Bay. 1973 proved to be a year of transition for the City of Arcata in how Arcata's waste was to be dealt with when the Department of Health condemned the site.
Closing the landfill brought forth several proposals for the location's
future: a golf course, a marina, a motocross area, a baseball field or a nature center and
marsh recreation area. The City of Arcata decided that this final option would
beneficially restore the site, marking a true changing over in the environmental action of
the marshland's populace.
THE HISTORY OF THE ARCATA MARSH When Arcata's first wastewater treatment plant opened, it was a slow evolving plant with minimum environmentally friendly aspects. Constructed in 1949, the plant released unchlorinated primary treated effluent into the Arcata Bay (also known as the north portion of the Humboldt Bay). This kind of pollution carries suspended solids, BOD's (biochemical oxygen demand), and possible pathogens (EPA, 1993).
In 1957, oxidation ponds spanning 55 acres were added to this facility which is responsible for the secondary treatment process. Chlorination became a part of the treatment process in 1966 (AMWS Map and Guide, 1994).
In the late 1960's the Arcata Marsh began to take on a new face. Because the economy of the lumber industry was suffering the two Van Vleet lumbermills, now the present day "Butcher's Slough", were closed down. Dr. George Allen, a retired fisheries professor at Humboldt State University, started a wastewater aquaculture project in 1969 to raise Pacific Salmon and cutthroat trout in mixtures of sea water and partially treated wastewater (Dale, 1993).
Evolution of the Marsh Project
A regional wastewater treatment was proposed by the Humboldt Bay
Wastewater Authority in 1975 that was estimated to cost $25 million (Dale, 1993). Since
the area was no longer allowed to release effluent into the bay, the plan of action was to
create a pipeline that ran across the Humboldt Bay, dumping the regional communities'
sewage directly into the ocean. Arcata didn't agree with this solution. The city appealed
to the Regional and State Boards to challenge the proposed amendment in 1974. Because of
the pressure of time induced by the Water Pollution Control Act, the boards rejected
Arcata's request. Support from another state agency, the Coastal Conservancy, gave rise to
a solid argument about which was the most appropriate solution.
Funding for a wastewater treatment facility, however, was not what the Conservancy had planned. A wildlife sanctuary was a more applicable project for the Coastal Conservancy's cause. Thus, in 1981, under a grant, the degraded marshes were reconstructed and a flourishing ecosystem was born (Mangelsdorf, 1993). The original Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary covered 75 acres.
In 1978, wastewater was still a problem in Arcata and the proposed bay-wide pipe line solution was being questioned. What if an earthquake occured? A tsunami? Who was responsible for the clean-up if a ship were to accidentally cut the line? Not only was this proposed idea energy-intensive and costly, there were arguments about liability, and no one wanted to be responsible for footing the bill (Gearheart, 1995). In 1978, Arcata citizens rallied for an integrated wastewater treatment process within a natural system, taking on the challenge of section 201 of the Clean Water Act (EAI, 1979). Arcata was authorized in 1979 to demonstrate "enhancement" by the SWRCB.
A Task Force on Wastewater Treatment came together to demonstrate that the natural processes of a wetland wastewater treatment facility would offer an appropriate solution to its unsatisfactory polluting procedures. From 1979 to 1982 experiments were executed with partially treated wastewater and the natural processes of wetland ecosystem which demonstrated that constructed freshwater wetlands could be used to treat Arcata's wastewater and also enhance the biological productivity of each wetland to which the wastewater was released (EPA, 1993). The Task Force's plan of action had many benefits. It was cost-effective, simple, and most importantly to the community, it was appropriate.
Fortunately, the project gained support of the Arcata City Council and political representatives in the state's capital. The Task Force's plan was officially authorized in 1983, developing a completely constructed wetland wastewater treatment system to be completed in 1986. The Arcata Marsh project is an example of a community's involvement in environmental politics, an ethical evaluation of land and it's uses, and an application of appropriate technology in an urban community.
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construction