By Rachel Becker, CalMatters
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Spurts of goo oozed between Jeff Wingfield’s fingers as he methodically crushed a handful of golden mussels, popping the shells of the tiny invaders like bubblewrap.
“You can just push your way right through them,” said Wingfield from the dock where he stood at the Port of Stockton, looking down at the thimble-sized debris in his palm.
Last October, a couple of miles down the Stockton Deepwater Shipping Channel, state water managers first discovered that golden mussels had invaded North America.
Seeing how fast they’ve multiplied in the last year “was like a gut punch,” said Wingfield, a deputy director at the port.
The mussels are infamous for voracious appetites that fuel their rapid growth. Now, state and local water managers are battling to keep golden mussels from reaching uninfested lakes and reservoirs. They’re racing to keep them from damaging the pumping facilities that send Delta water to farms and cities in Central and Southern California.
But here, in the web of waterways where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers meet, a new reality is setting in. Thick colonies of the mussels already coat boats and piers and threaten water supplies for cities and farms.
In the urgency to stop the spread, state agencies have prioritized protecting the rest of the state from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, over protecting the Delta itself. Residents and local leaders feel overlooked. And they fear that the stigma of a golden mussel infestation will drive visitors and boaters away from one of the country’s largest estuaries.
“That’s almost like bringing bedbugs or something back from a trip overseas,” Wingfield said. “If you’ve been in the Delta now, it’s like you’ve been exposed.”
The economic consequences are looming large. Invasive mussel and clam species cost an estimated $1.6 billion every year, largely in North America — costs overwhelmingly counted in damage to business and infrastructure, rather than management or prevention.
“We’re just getting started,” said Ted Grosholz, a professor emeritus with the UC Davis Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute. “As the populations grow, the problems will grow.”
A Delta scourge, one year in
The Delta is home to nearly three quarters of a million people, half a million acres of farmland, threatened and endangered fish species — and now, the golden mussel.
Native to China and Southeast Asia, the mussel is suspected to have slipped in on a commercial ship, past long-delayed shipping rules aimed at keeping out invaders.
Now, the abundant mollusk is invading critical infrastructure.
The Contra Costa Water District reports golden mussels in multiple parts of its system. And in Stockton, the heart of the invasion, the municipal utilities department found golden mussels on an oil containment boom near their intakes.
Travis Small, deputy director of water resources at the department, said he’s concerned about the raw water pipeline that transports Delta water to their treatment plant, and plans to hire a diver to inspect the utility’s fish screens and pump well. He calls the rapid spread “worrisome.”
The mussels have even started appearing on irrigation siphons that pipe Delta water onto farmland. Though the San Joaquin County Farm Bureau and Delta irrigation districts haven’t reported clogged pipes, yet, Keith Lyons, a diver who inspects underwater equipment, said that he’s already seeing the mussels on them.
One siphon, he said, was so thickly encrusted that the mussels piled two inches deep, both inside and out.
“There’s a lot. A heck of a lot,” Lyons said. “I’m worried for the farmers. There’s no quick answer. There’s no Roundup.”
Dennis Pelucca, a pest control advisor, also spotted mussels on the siphons for Rindge Tract, an island west of Stockton, to irrigate crops.
So many mussels were hanging off the outside of the pipe, it looked like a beard, he said. On the inside, “if it gets to the point like arteries getting clogged up with cholesterol, then that’s what you’re going to be dealing with. It will plug them up.”
The consequences could be devastating for farming, said Christopher Neudeck, president of the civil engineering firm Kjeldsen, Sinnock & Neudeck and a district engineer for many of the Delta islands. The region produces dozens of different crops, and drives more than $4.6 billion in agricultural output.
“If (the siphons) plug up, we’re going to lose billions of dollars worth of agricultural production,” Neudeck said. “We know it’s become extremely problematic. But nothing has really been done. We’re just in a holding pattern, waiting to let the second shoe drop.”
Wingfield, too, has been grappling with the invasive mussels at the Port of Stockton for the past year. He’s worried they could clog intakes for vital water systems, including an aerator that maintains legally required oxygen levels in the shipping channel.
Standing on the dock, Wingfield’s colleague Steven Bender hauled sampling plates from the water, deployed to help staff track the invasion.
The bottom had been stripped clean of mussels at the end of the summer, but by October was again completely encrusted. Mussels grew on top of mussels.
Bender ripped a handful away from the plates, with a sound like velcro tearing.
No help arriving
For all the emerging and anticipated consequences of the invasion, the state has no specific funding or plans to tackle harms in the Delta.
California lawmakers allocated $20 million in Proposition 4 funds this year to fight off golden and other invasive mussels statewide. But according to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, none of it is set aside to protect the Delta or help it adapt.
Other pots of money, like the department’s Boating Access Grant Program, could in theory help fund eligible projects to combat the golden mussel in the Delta, but they aren’t specifically designated for that purpose.
Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, a Democrat from Stockton, called the $20 million an initial investment and said the legislature’s Delta Caucus is looking at what more its members can do. She called for federal help.
“These things came clearly from another region, another country — and that means all of our waterways are at risk,” Ransom said, calling the mussels a “serious emerging threat” to farms, water supplies, and recreation.
But Rep. Josh Harder’s federal legislation aimed at combating the invasion in the Delta has stalled.
“It’s tough to get bills from California passed in this Congress,” said Harder, the Democrat representing San Joaquin and parts of Stanislaus and Contra Costa counties who introduced the bill. “This shouldn’t be a partisan issue.”
As Gov. Gavin Newsom pushes for a $20 billion tunnel to send more Delta water to farms and cities in Central and Southern California, the mussel adds to residents’ growing sense that the Delta is under siege — seen more as a conduit for water than as a place with its own vibrant ecosystems, cultures and farms to protect.
“We do feel abandoned,” said Brett Baker, a water lawyer and sixth-generation farmer in the region. “If you were expecting help from the state, you’d be foolish — because at the same time this is happening, they’re proceeding through with the (tunnel) proceedings to basically eviscerate the Delta.”
A silver bullet?
In the absence of state or federal help, some still hold out hope that something, someday might eradicate the mussels from the Delta.
A few miles away from the Port, at the Delta Marine Yacht Center boatyard, Bob Parsons peered at the dripping undercarriage of the work barge he’d hauled from the water.
Back in March, he’d covered each pontoon with a different type of paint — an experiment to see which was better at preventing the buildup of aquatic hangers-on, like algae. Tiny shells jutted from both pontoons seven months later.
“This is such a small amount in comparison to what I’ve been seeing,” Parsons said.
Parsons is hoping for a silver bullet, but scientists agree that one isn’t coming. The invasion is already too established, and the Delta too complex.
Still, he like many others, has pinned at least some of his hopes on a compound being developed by the Invasive Species Corporation, a Davis-based start-up founded by scientist and entrepreneur Pamela Marrone.
The product, Zequanox, is already used to combat other invasive mussels, like the species that have taken hold in the Great Lakes and parts of Southern California. Marrone’s team is optimizing it for the golden mussel, as well.
Marrone cautions that controlling mussels in pipes, the inner workings of boats and other water infrastructure is doable. But eliminating mussels from the Delta “is not likely feasible or cost effective.”
Without a Delta-wide fix, boaters are grasping for anything they can get their hands on — like special paints, or using ultrasonic sound waves to make their vessels inhospitable to the invaders.
In the meantime, Parson’s team is ripping hundreds of pounds off their hulls. And a sense of futility is creeping across waterfronts and docks.
A community at stake
On a warm evening in October, 85-year-old Gene Beley walked down J dock at the Village West Marina and Resort in Stockton. A great egret followed, picking its way down the walkway in the slanting light, looking for dinner.
J dock has become Beley’s community in the year since his wife passed away. “These are all my neighbors,” Beley said, passing the other boats belonging to a bartender, a contractor, a tech executive. “A lot of times, like Friday or Saturday nights, you’ll see a group right here, solving the world’s problems.”
His friend of 20 years, 75-year-old boat mechanic Fred Vijsma, keeps his yacht just a couple of slips down. Golden mussels clog the thruster and decorate the underside of his dinghies.
Vijsma has been waging a private war against the tiny invaders. He keeps the mussels he’s scraped off his dinghy in a coffee can, and kills them with salt — an act part science, part vengeance. The smell of the dead mussels, even in the open air, was overpowering. And his worry about how the mussels will harm this region, and his friends, was palpable.
“In just the short period of time that we’ve had these mussels, it’s totally devastating,” Vijsma said. “What do we do? How do we fix this? We don’t want to leave our boats.”
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
