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Write a Letter! Make a Difference! The California Department of Fish & Game has just released its Lake Earl Draft Management Plan and Draft Environmental Impact Report. The Preferred Alternative condemns the lagoon to low water levels during the summer months, which will have significant adverse effects on native plants, fish, birds, and wildlife. We endorse as a long-term goal restoring the lagoon to a natural-fluctuating self-breaching system. In the interim we advocate that the lagoon be allowed to rise to at least a 10-inch mean sea level before mechanically breaching it and that no breaching occurs after February 1st.Please copy and e-mail the following letter to friendsdelnorte@yahoo.com on or before September 3, 2003 (or better yet, write your own comments and send to the same e-mail address). The letters will be personally delivered to the California Fish & Game Department. Thank you -- your letters are crucial to protecting this Great Coastal Place! ********************************* Date: Karen Kovacs California Department of Fish & Game 619 Second Street Eureka, California 95501 Re: Lake Earl Coastal Lagoon Draft Plan/EIR Dear Ms. Kovacs: I support a long-term objective of restoring the Lake Earl coastal lagoon to a naturally fluctuating, self-breaching system -- to be accomplished through phased restoration, taking place gradually over the next 20 years. Please consider, as an alternative with superior environmental benefits and few adverse impacts, the gradual, phased implementation of breaching at increasing lagoon water levels, including breaching at levels between 10-12 ft. In the meanwhile, please allow the lagoon to function in as high and as natural a state as possible. In the short term, Fish and Game should continue doing what has been its practice for the past 15 years, and what has effectively become the baseline: allow the lagoon to approach 10 ft before mechanical winter breaching. Fish and Game's Preferred Alternative of breaching at 8 ft is simply unacceptable and reduces the annual average water level below the height of 4.6 ft. In addition, Fish and Game should move the second breach date from February 15th to February 1st. The last breach determines at what level the lagoon will sit at for 5 to 6 months during the important growing season, spawning and rearing season, and nesting season. Signed
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