Equipment is being staged between the Marine Terrace Trail (emergency road) and some very large gullies behind Seaclift Estates because work on the Seaclift Gully Erosion-Control Project is to begin Wednesday, Aug. 22, a year later than originally planned.

Cambria Community Services District officials say the 40-acre project will benefit the coastal habitat. Marine species also will be better protected, they say, because less silt will find its way into the waters of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

A $48,000 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Coastal Program grant pays for the project, and participating agencies are providing in-kind services.

Crews are going to put eucalyptus logs from the district’s 2011 Santa Rosa Creek Restoration Project into gullies. The delay in starting the Seaclift project was in part because more logs were needed than were provided by the creek project.

Sustainable Conservation, in partnership with the services district, Friends of Fiscalini Ranch Preserve’s RanchHand volunteers, Upper Salinas-Las Tablas Resource Conservation Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will stabilize the four erosion gullies, remove invasive plants and replant with native grassland seeds.

Some plantings of native species are to be done on the project area, but closer to the rainy season so the plants will have a better chance of surviving.

Crews are to monitor and maintain the site for five years.

In last year’s Santa Rosa Creek Restoration Project, crews removed eucalyptus trees from a riparian area nearer Highway 1. Native species were planted to replace the eucs.

For details, email Carlos Mendoza, the district’s resource and facilities manager, at cmendoza@cambriacsd.org.

—Kathe Tanner