“We were basically the inventors of this program. It was one of our legislators that helped push that through,” said Marine Patrol Sgt. Doug Powell.
According to the California Department of Boating and Waterways Web site, “In October of 1997, Senate Bill 172 (Senator Richard Rainey) created the (AWAF) program. It provides funds to public agencies to remove, store, and dispose of abandoned, wrecked or dismantled vessels or any other partially submerged objects which pose a substantial hazard to navigation, from navigable waterways or adjacent public property, or private property with the landowner’s consent.”
Powell said that statewide, the program provides only $500,000 per year for grants. Over the past 10 years, Contra Costa County has received annually between $72,000 and $250,000. CCC’s allotment of the grant this year is $102,000.
Hand-in-hand with this abatement program, CCC Board of Supervisors passed a mooring and sanitation ordinance back in 2005 that has helped move derelict vessels and live-aboards out of CCC waterways to other locations in the state, more specifically to Sacramento and San Joaquin county waterways.
Lt. Mark Williams said that the ordinance has been so successful in CCC that there has been talk of taking it statewide.
Since the passing of this ordinance two years ago, said Williams, the number of derelict boats the CCC Marine Patrol has needed to remove has dwindled from 40 boats in 2005 to 29 vessels in 2006. This year, only 15 have been marked for removal.
Also available to the marine patrol for the first time this year is a fenced storage yard, which allows the marine patrol to remove a derelict boat from the water and store it while a search for the boat’s owner is publicized. Before, a boat would need to remain in the water until the 14-day search was completed, which increased the chances that the boat would sink and double the cost of removal.
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