Fixer Upper
Birds Overheard: Issue 7
I ran out of bird anecdotes this month, so instead of waxing poetic about American avocets (pictured reverse), I’d like to tell you about one place they live: a wetland near my home called Famosa Slough. Nestled near the western terminus of the 8, between a block of condos and the Shell station on Point Loma Boulevard, this little backwater of the San Diego River attracts more than 240 species of birds, many of which stop here to rest while traveling along the migratory path known as the Pacific Flyway. Avocets live here year-round, and so do I, in a small apartment several blocks away. In the evenings, I like to walk along the little trail that traces the slough’s western shore, ducking beneath willows and Brazilian pepper trees and keeping an eye out for hummingbirds. For nearly five years, I’ve thought of this place as a lucky accident, a rare pocket of untrammeled beauty that evaded development through some fortunate alignment of the stars. This notion changed when I met Jim Peugh.
Jim has served as the chair of Friends of Famosa Slough since the mid-1980s, and he remembers a time when it was thoroughly trammeled. “The slough made me an environmentalist,” he says. “In the 80s, it was a dump — full of broken water heaters and trash.” Back then, a developer named Terry Sheldon had purchased the wetland, intending to fill it with a 413-unit condo block in defiance of state laws protecting coastal habitat. A 1986 article in the Reader chronicles Sheldon’s tactics, which focused on the gates that allow water to enter and exit the slough—a cleansing, cyclical process known as tidal flushing. Environmental activists propped these gates open, but Sheldon hired private guards to keep them closed, creating a stagnant system that quickly began to stink. Citing the smell as a health hazard and public nuisance, Sheldon circulated a petition calling to remove the slough from the Coastal Commission’s jurisdiction in order to “clean it up.” More than 700 people signed it, unaware they were effectively greenlighting Sheldon’s condo project. In protest, the Friends of Famosa circulated a counter-petition that gathered 5,200 signatures. The development stalled, and in 1990, Sheldon sold the land to the city.
Where I see a pretty pond, Jim sees 35 years of careful restoration and management. As we walk, he points out the milestones. A berm running along the sidewalk was built with dirt excavated from the slough bottom, simultaneously improving tidal flow while shielding birds from traffic noise. A box culvert that allows water to pass beneath Point Loma Boulevard had to be enlarged after the city widened the street to four lanes. Treatment ponds added to the slough’s south end catch runoff during rainstorms, and a stand of thirsty willows absorbs the freshwater, helping stabilize the slough’s salinity, on which its fish populations depend. Apparently, this stand has been causing trouble lately, simply because the willows are doing a little too well. So much vegetation has grown up in the ponds that water has started to overflow the berms when it rains. The Friends of Famosa Slough just received a right-of-entry permit to clear some of it out.
Listening to Jim, it occurs to me that nothing in this neighborhood exists in its current form by accident, though luck may still play a role. Whether slough or condominium, it’s all here because someone paid for it—with money, effort, and a granular knowledge of California’s legislative machinery. Jim has invested 40 years in the slough (at one point, he spent so much time in public meetings that many officials mistakenly believed he was a city employee), but he seems more interested in discussing this wetland’s future than its past. Work on the treatment ponds begins February 8th, and Jim will be out there with the other Friends of Famosa Slough, hosting a work party from 9 a.m. to noon. We’re all invited.
Birds Overheard is a column and linocut series published in Mail Mag, a monthly zine by Burn All Books.
