Lake Merced a "shipwreck' and The City is blamed

Trout can barely survive; lake's boat hoists haven't worked in 10 years

TOM STIENSTRA OUTDOORS
EXAMINER OUTDOORS WRITER
March 3, 1999

LAKE MERCED in San Francisco, once the nation's best example of a city lake for fishing, boating and recreation, is getting the plug pulled on all concession operations.

"We're out of here," said Chris Senti, who has overseen operations at Lake Merced since 1984 as vice president of Urban Parks Concessionaire.

When Urban Parks' contract ends April 25 and its operations shut, it will leave the lake without facilities for the public to rent boats and buy fishing tackle. It will also end all youth programs and special trout plants. Lake Merced, near the San Francisco Zoo, is the only public recreation lake within a 15-mile range of 2 million Bay Area people.

"I have seen 15 years of talk, meetings and studies with very little being done," said Senti, who specifically blamed the city of San Francisco for the continuing degraded conditions at the lake.

Marvin Yee of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, which oversees Lake Merced, pledged that the Merced Master Plan released in 1997 would provide many of the answers. That hasn't happened.

The operation remains a shipwreck, and the money spent so far at the lake has not addressed any of the defining issues: water levels to maintain a healthy aquatic environment, rampant tule growth that blocks shore access, vandalism, and maintenance of bathrooms, piers and docks.

Yee is scrambling to find another concessionaire, and is reportedly considering the management of the Boathouse restaurant at Merced, though that operation has never owned and maintained a fleet of rented boats, operated a boat hoist or ramp, sold fishing equipment and permits, arranged for troutJUMP TYPE plants or directed youth fishing programs. Yee did not return phone calls to his office Monday and Tuesday.

Urban Parks is the No. 1 recreation concessionaire in California, with operations at San Pablo Reservoir, Lake Chabot, Lake Del Valle and Shadow Cliffs Lake, Camanche Lake and elsewhere.

When Urban Parks won the contract for Lake Merced in 1984, it was considered a major coup for The City, as well as for Urban Parks, which planned to make the lake the crown jewel of its recreation program.

When it started operations in 1984, Field & Stream magazine recognized the program as an example for other cities to follow across the United States.

But since then, The City has allowed Lake Merced to deteriorate into an embarrassment, according to Senti, and Urban Parks does not want anything to do with the place after years of protests and no corrective action.

My latest visits last week confirmed the validity of the complaints.

The first thing you notice is the low water level. The Master Plan calls for a 27-foot water level, but it's more like 17 feet, and that's the highest it has been in 10 years. The lake has been as low as half empty in the 1990s, and for years, Senti has argued that the San Francisco Water Department could easily fill the lake with water from Crystal Springs.

According to Mount Lassen Trout Hatchery, the sustained low water has created a decline in oxygen levels and a corresponding increase in nutrient levels.

In turn, that has caused water quality so poor that fish can barely survive. Those that do live often taste terrible, like fertilizer.

The adjacent Merced Impoundment, which once provided a great trout and bass fishing program for kids, has been lowered to the point that it can no longer sustain fish.

South Lake, one of the three lakes that make up what is known as Lake Merced, was once the most popular trout fishery in Northern California, but now it is pretty much abandoned: Tules have filled in 10 to 20 feet along much of the shore, eliminating shoreline access in many areas, and the Kids Fishing Pier is now surrounded by tules and is unusable. The Haas Pier, at the end of Brotherhood Way, donated by the Haas Foundation, has suffered several fires and has been left in disrepair.

The result is that low-cost fishing for youngsters who could ride their bikes to Merced has been ruined.

The boat hoists at the South Lake, where residents once could launch dinghies, sailboats and row boats, are not only inoperable, but even if repaired, no longer reach open water. They haven't worked for 10 years, without intervention by The City.

On my latest visit, the bathroom next to the Boathouse restaurant was dirty and foul, and two of the three sinks have either been stolen or blasted right off the concrete wall.

The electric hand blowers, out of commission for most of last year, are now working, but apparently out of habit, some people are still trying to dry their hands with toilet paper. Tuesday morning, an entire roll was on the floor.

The best things still here are the fleet of rental boats, the tackle shop, and the bimonthly stocks of trout purchased by Urban Parks. And that will soon disappear.

"When we're out, we're taking everything we own with us, of course," Senti said.

The irony is that Urban Parks' last day will be April 24, the last Saturday of the month, the traditional opening of the trout season and once the biggest day of the year at Lake Merced.

And what of Dave Lyons, 82, the longtime Examiner field scout who has worked the tackle shop on weekday mornings since 1976.

"It looks like I'm going to mildew," Lyons said. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I wish I did."

The City apparently doesn't have a clue what to do, either.