MARIN INDEPENDENT JOURNAL
9/16/00

Sierra Club takes on San Quentin

Group says prison's plan to fill in 2.2 acres of bay threatens habitat
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By Lateef Mungin

Filling more than 2.2 acres of San Francisco Bay to shore up a state prison that may face closure makes no sense and threatens to harm sensitive bay habitat, according to the Marin chapter of the Sierra Club.  The environmental group this week weighed in on a plan to fill 2.2 acres of shoreline next to San Quentin State Prison that officials there say is needed to halt erosion that has rendered a guard tower useless.  "Essentially, it makes no sense to spend $6 million to add 2.2 acres of fill to the ecologically sensitive waters of San Francisco Bay," said Herb Kutchins, a member of the local Sierra Club's executive committee. "It makes no sense to shore up the towers of a nineteenth century dungeon that almost everyone agrees should be closed. To add insult to injury, a good part of the expenditure will be to protect a parking lot."  The letter was sent to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which issues permits for such projects.

Along with the fill, the project calls for building a 15-foot-high, 1,215-foot-long concrete retaining wall and a 10-foot-high wall along an employee parking lot. The walls would protect the grounds from wave action.  The proposed project comes at time when state legislators and even the head of the state Department of Corrections have indicated that the prison may be a good candidate for closure. State legislators have asked for a study evaluating the ramifications of closing San Quentin, the oldest state prison in California. A report is expected by June 2001.

Prison officials, however, said there are no immediate plans to close San Quentin, and state Department of Corrections Margot Bach expressed disappointment that the Sierra Club did not voice its objections during earlier public meetings.  "We are trying to get this work started before the rainy season," said Bach. "There is no indication that the facility will be closed within this fiscal year. What do they want? Do they want the facility to fall into the bay?"  Other local environmental groups that were present at the meetings raised no objections to the plans, Bach said.

"Just because other environmental groups have not commented on this does not mean they approve of this," said Kutchins. "The only comment I have heard is from the Audubon Society and they said they would approve of it based on certain mitigations. We did not see these mitigations on the planning documents."  The Sierra Club asked in its letter for the prison to conduct more studies of the potential environmental impacts on the area, which the group said is located near habitat for several endangered or threatened species, including the California brown pelican, steelhead trout, the salt marsh harvest mouse and the California clapper rail.

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials would not comment specifically about the Sierra Club letter. "We have not formed an opinion on this yet," said Donna Shepard, an Army Corps spokeswoman. Shepard said the Army Corps will deliver the letter to prison officials so they can address the Sierra Club's concerns.  Brian Wirtz, project manager with the Army Corps said a decision on the permit could be made by the end of the year. If a permit is granted construction could start by next spring, he said.