State grant will improve Clover Creek Preserve
Redding Record Searchlight - 8/20/03
By Scott Mobley, staff writer

It started as a court-ordered flood control project dressed up as a natural park.

Now the Clover Creek Preserve could become one of Redding's premier recreation areas, an east-side rival to the popular Sacramento River Trail.

The city won a $2.7 million state grant that will let crews add a footbridge, several miles of walking and biking trails, and acres more natural grass, blue oak and valley oak around the 145-acre preserve off Shasta View Drive.

The grant also means a larger parking lot for trail users and more restrooms, drinking fountains and benches along the pathway, said Kurt Starman, deputy city manager and top Redevelopment Agency administrator.

Park planners will spend part of the state money on interpretive signs to educate visitors about the restored vernal pools and oak woodland they will traverse on paved trails.

The city will plow some $418,000 of that grant into an interest-bearing trust to pay for the preserve's upkeep.

The grant pushes the Clover Creek Preserve budget to $10 million.

The state California Department of Water Resources awarded the grant, tapping a $1.9 billion clean water, watershed and flood protection bond issue voters approved in 2000.

Bulldozers last month started scooping out the 8-foot-deep basin, designed to quell a once-in-a-century deluge along notoriously flood-prone Clover Creek.

A group of Goodwater Avenue-area residents sued the city and Shasta County in 1999 after suffering more than $800,000 in damage from flooding between 1996 and 1998. They blamed upstream development for swelling the creek to dangerous levers during ordinary rains.

A Shasta County Superior Court judge ordered flood control along Clover Creek as part of a settlement.

Neighbors around the preserve-to-be have long complained about illegally dumped appliances cluttering the landscape, and dirt bikes and pickups chewing up the meadows and oak woodlands. They have asked officials to crack down on the noisy parties sometimes staged in the woods.

Meanwhile, residents in nearby Starview Estates have waited for the city to connect Shasta View between Galaxy Way and Leonard Street. Shasta View motorists must detour through the neighborhood, menacing children and seniors, residents have said.

The Clover Creek Preserve promises to stifle these complaints when it opens in mid-2004, some two years behind schedule.

Crews will restore the damaged meadows and grasslands and keep off-roaders from destroying them again. Dozers will grade a bed for the Shasta View link later this summer.

The city waited 2 years for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit before the bulldozers revved up this summer. The corps enforces the federal Clean Water Act, which includes the no-net-loss doctrine for wetlands and seasonal streams. The city and the agency had to agree on a strategy to make up for the wetlands scraped away by flood basin construction.

The state grant pushes the state's Clover Creek contribution to $7.7 million. Redding, the city of Anderson and Shasta County will fund $2 million out of the SHASTEC Redevelopment Area, which all three run. Developer fees will chip in $300,000.

Mayor Mark Cibula in a press statement thanked state Sen. Sam Aanestad, R-Grass Valley, and Assemblyman Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, for helping the city win the Clover Creek grant.