for the transient docks they now enjoy in
Stockton came from federal boating fuel
tax dollars that go back into their favorite
pastime through what is known as “the
BIG program.”
The federal infrastructure grant,
roughly $1,384,000 administered through
the California Dept. of Boating and
Waterways, provided about half the cost
of the guest docks and just a small portion
of the total project cost. But it injected
essential seed money to get this cruising
revival underway, according to Ron Cook
of the Stockton Economic Redevelopment
Department.
“The city had built a marina on the
Stockton Channel with 180 leased slips in
the 1980s, but it had fallen into disrepair
and had to be decommissioned in 2004,”
Cook explains. “The channel comes right
into downtown and everyone understood
it was a major resource for the rebirthing
of the waterfront, but we had to figure out
what the community’s needs were.”
The city’s Erin Mettler adds, “Actually,
the Stockton Waterfront Revival Committee
struggled with how best to reclaim our
waterfront for over 10 years. You have
to remember the situation that they had
to deal with on the waterfront. It was
deserted. It was contaminated. It was an
industrial wasteland.”
In fact, she says, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency desig-
nated some parcels of waterfront property
Superfund sites, “meaning the land was so
contaminated from industrial pollutants
that no private developer would dare touch
it,” Mettler explains. A large portion of the
overall marina and waterfront promenade
revitalization costs, about $30 million, had
to come from other sources of city and
federal funds, augmented by cleanup litiga-
tion settlements in the form of payments
from past property owners, which were
used to dig up and treat contaminated soil.
