Memorandum
Date: July 26, 2022
To: The Honorable Lake County Board of Supervisors
From: Marina Deligiannis, Deputy Water Resources Director
Subject: CivicSpark Fellow Presentation: The Clear Lake Shoreline Inventory Project and Shoreline Stewardship Program Development for the Lake County Water Resources Department
Executive Summary:
AmeriCorps CivicSpark Fellow Emma Belanger will present a summary of her service year with the Lake County Water Resources Department (Department). This August, the CivicSpark Fellow will have completed an eleven-month term of AmeriCorps service with the Department that began in September 2021 with the goal of implementing the Clear Lake Shoreline Assessment and Inventory Project and beginning the process of developing a Shoreline Stewardship Program.
The Shoreline Inventory Project objective is to improve and protect the public’s interest in the waters and the bed of the waters in and around Clear Lake and support statewide interests in commerce, navigation, fishery, recreation, and ecological preservation, while the objective of the Shoreline Stewardship Program is to advance public awareness about shoreline management, best practices, and stewardship in order to bolster the ecological health of Clear Lake and promote community engagement.
Throughout her service year, the Fellow supported Lake County Water Resources Lakebed Management by inventorying the natural and artificial conditions of the shoreline, researching other shoreline stewardship programs in the United States, making recommendations for the future implementation of a Shoreline Stewardship program, and creating outreach material to utilize the public’s knowledge and perceptions regarding the Clear Lake shoreline, along with a variety of other tasks and responsibilities.
More specifically, the CivicSpark Fellow accomplished completing the “Score the Shore” methodology and created an inventory of data for the totality of Clear Lake’s shoreline. With this data set, both lakebed managers within the Department and the public will be able to better understand the condition of the shoreline and know how to improve management practices. Importantly, after finishing the inventory, creating an accessible data collection, and disseminating the information in a user-friendly StoryMap that will be posted to the Department’s website, the Department now has the capacity for more rigorous and nuanced lakebed and shoreline stewardship that they will be able to communicate with the public.
In this presentation, the Fellow will provide an overview of the implementation of the Clear Lake Shoreline Assessment and Inventory Project including methodology, summary of findings, and next steps. Additionally, the Fellow will outline the next steps for implementing the Shoreline Stewardship Program and how this will augment public care and engagement with Clear Lake.
If not budgeted, fill in the blanks below only:
Estimated Cost: ________ Amount Budgeted: ________ Additional Requested: ________ Future Annual Cost: ________
Consistency with Vision 2028 (check all that apply): ☐ Not applicable
☒ Well-being of Residents ☐ Public Safety ☐ Disaster Prevention, Preparedness, Recovery
☐ Economic Development ☐ Infrastructure ☐ County Workforce
☒ Community Collaboration ☐ Business Process Efficiency ☒ Clear Lake
Recommended Action:
Presentation only.