FISCAL IMPACT:
No impact to the general fund. The Conservation and Development and Public Works Departments have raised $330,000 in grant and mitigation funds to support the proposed historical ecology project, more than enough to cover the proposed $30,000 increase to the expenditure limit for the contract. The County has been awarded two grants for the project: $150,000 from the California Coastal Conservancy and $80,000 from the California Department of Fish and Game. The County Flood Control and Water Conservation District has contributed $100,000 in mitigation funds to the project. The Contractor will provide the scientific expertise for the project, perform most of the data collection and analysis and author all reports. The Department of Conservation and Development (DCD) will assist with the Geographic Information System (GIS) and public involvement components. Within the existing capacity and budget of the Water Agency, staff from the DCD will also provide some project management services in kind as part of the required local match for the grants.
BACKGROUND:
The proposed increase in the contract payment limit is needed because Contractor is performing a larger portion of project tasks than originally anticipated. County staff have been forced to attend to other business and are performing fewer tasks associated with the historical ecological project than initially anticipated. The proposed contract amendment does not change the scope of the actual project, just shifts workload from the County to Contractor.
The Board of Supervisors has approved a number of past actions relating to this project. On April 10th, 2007 the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors authorized staff to submit a grant proposal to the California Coastal Conservancy to work with the Contra Costa Watershed Forum and the San Francisco Estuary Institute to assess historical ecological conditions in the County. On June 26th, 2007 the Board authorized an initial contract with Contractor for work associated with this project.
The historical ecology project has been recognized by individuals and organizations involved in the Contra Costa Watershed Forum as an important initiative providing information on historical conditions to better inform future restoration and management. The completed project would provide direct benefits to the County, including new GIS data layers (such as digital, ortho-rectified versions of the earliest available aerial photos for the County (ca. 1939) that can be overlain with other layers in the County’s GIS), baseline information and analysis useful for flood protection and integrated water management (e.g., information useful for locating sites for County projects that provide the most cost effective and sustainable mitigation and infiltration opportunities), and baseline information on landscape trends and trajectories that will help guide conservation and restoration efforts in which the County is involved (such as the East Contra Costa County Habitat Conservation Plan / Natural Community Conservation Plan).
The project is county-wide in scope but has an East County focus. At the County scale, the project is collecting baseline historical data resources (including historic aerial photos, Spanish rancho maps and other geographic information from the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, early public land surveys and an array of other sources that Contractor has found useful and available for other investigations and has produced an initial public outreach document for the County that was released at the third quadrennial Contra Costa County Creek and Watershed Symposium in November 2007. For eastern Contra Costa County, the project will carry out more detailed data collection, mapping, analysis, and reporting. However, the intention is to extend such analysis to other areas of the County in the future when additional funding becomes available. The county-wide data collection that is part of this initial project will support those future phases.
Staff recommends that the Board authorize the Director of the Conservation and Development Department or her designee the authority to amend the existing contract with the San Francisco Estuary Institute for funded work associated with the historical ecology project.