Over the past ten years, $12 million has been expended on an attempt to stop invasive Spartina cordgrass from spreading along the edges of San Francisco Bay. The plant is considered a greater menace to the estuary than anything apart from development. It outcompetes native cordgrass, obliterates mudflats, and destroys endangered-species habitat. In Oregon it spread throughout Willapa Bay, but here the Conservancy started an eradication effort early. Whereas in 2004 the weed covered 3,000 acres, now only 300 acres remain. Because it grows explosively, however, it could quickly come back to cleared areas, invade newly restored tidal wetlands, and keep on spreading.

Peggy Olofson left a secure job as water quality engineer at the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board to direct the ISP as a private contractor to the Conservancy. “It was quite a risk, but it was exciting,” she said. “Now I’m having to lay off 10 employees, and I personally have used up all my cushion money. I have no money for next month’s mortgage, will have to cancel my health insurance--it’s $800 a month--and I’m not servicing my car. My daughter, who’s in community college and was hoping to go to a four-year university next year, won’t be able to without her mother’s income.”

There was also no more rent money for the office, and the landlord is under pressure. “His place is emptying out,” Olofson said. Some funds were patched together to keep at least some of the Spartina Project going, but it’s not enough to prevent damage to the eradication effort.

How did this disaster happen? The Conservancy’s executive officer, Sam Schuchat, sighs and explains: Every three months, agencies tell the controller how much bond money they will need for the next three months, based on bills and commitments. The controller tells the treasurer, who goes to New York institutions that buy bonds. “They stopped buying them in September,” said Schuchat. “The entire financial system was seizing up, the economy was in freefall. The institutions looked at California [at the budget impasse] and thought, they’re not fixing this.”

New York State had raised some taxes and wasn’t in this quagmire, Schuchat said, but “in this state the desire for public services outstrips the willingness to pay. It’s an adolescent view of public financing--that it should be done by someone else. Well, there’s nobody but us.”

If the freeze goes on for a long time, it will be hard to put back together what was carefully crafted over many years and suddenly blown apart. The only bright sign, Schuchat said, is that grantees and nonprofits have been forced to organize. “This is their moment to shine.”

The scramble for federal stimulus money is now underway. But unless the State provides some matching funds, and unless projects are “shovel ready,” opportunities to tap that source could be lost. If the bond freeze is not lifted soon, the delay will keep adding to project costs, and the fallout will continue to cascade.