Threats to Marin watersheds

The Marin Group has been working to protect many of the county's watersheds.

Big Lagoon (Muir Beach)

We said that the Pacific Way Flood Control Project, undertaken by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) in 2002 along Big Lagoon, had the potential for significant environmental damage and would lead only to modest flood control. (Big Lagoon exits to the ocean through Muir Beach.)

Unfortunately, our predictions were right. Not only did the project require the moving of 10 times as many endangered salmon as GGNRA had predicted, but it also reduced the amount of habitat, which undoubtedly increased mortality. The project has also cut off breeding habitat for the threatened red-legged frog for three years. Since these frogs breed for only about five years, GGNRA needs to take all possible measures to remedy habitat impacts before the spring of 2006. Two more years of blocked reproduction will virtually extirpate the species from this location.

The Marin Group has also urged GGNRA to hasten planning for its Big Lagoon project (see December-January-February 2003 Yodeler, page 10). The goal is to eliminate flooding and thus the pressure for damaging flood-control measures.

In response to the Group's criticism of the Pacific Way planning process, GGNRA has for the first time opened its planning to the public much earlier in the process. As a result, the public is getting the opportunity to comment on Big Lagoon planning as it occurs - rather than at the end, when changes are still legally possible but more difficult and often more adversarial.

The Sierra Club has stated its preliminary preference for a plan that includes the most extensive excavation to restore Big Lagoon as close as possible to its original extent, but we recognize that this option would require many truck trips for sediment disposal. It would work only if action is taken to reduce sediment sources higher in the watershed. Our final position will be determined after reviewing the Environmental Impact Statement.

Bolinas Lagoon

The original plan for the dredging of Bolinas Lagoon, near Stinson Beach and Bolinas, would have been the largest destruction of wetlands since the passage of the Clean Water Act. The Sierra Club played a major role in exposing the scientific flaws in the initial presentation of this project.

Some have taken our criticism of the prior plan as advocating a "hands-off" approach. Not so. As our letters should have made clear, we would support a modest, incremental, and scientifically justified project to restore more natural functioning to the watershed and the lagoon.

As with the Pacific Way Flood Control Project (see above), our criticism of the Bolinas Lagoon Project was not directed simply at the outcome but also at the process. We have received some response on these concerns. The county has agreed to create a blue-ribbon expert panel with no economic interest in the outcome. The panel is to review the project's scientific basis.

Sadly, this same circumspection regarding economic interest has not been applied to the Bolinas Lagoon Technical Advisory Committee (BLTAC), a committee of scientists, public agencies, and special-interest stakeholders which oversees the project. Three of the four special-interest members of BLTAC have an economic interest in keeping the lagoon open and navigable. This desire to keep the lagoon navigable is a reasonable point of view and may prove to be a component of an appropriate environmental solution. Furthermore, these folks have demonstrated a real interest in trying to do what is environmentally right. Nevertheless, this project has too often been subject to backroom negotiations resulting in surprising changes that had no basis in science and were intended solely to enhance certain stakeholders' economic returns. That is no way to run an "ecological restoration".

Considerable money and time might have been saved if the environmental community and economic interests had had equal representation on BLTAC. We continue to work with the county and the Technical Advisory Committee to achieve such representation. In the meantime, the project consultants are busy filling data gaps from the prior discredited study and hope by this summer to release a new presentation of what the lagoon might look like in 50 years. Then we can all decide if we like that 50-year future, and if not, what we might do about it.

Drakes Estero

Johnson's Oysters is a commercial factory farm within a national park. This oyster-raising business is located in the Point Reyes National Seashore on Drakes Estero, the only large estuary in California with wilderness quality.

The 1976 wilderness legislation for Point Reyes National Seashore states clearly that the oyster-growing area should become part of the Phillip Burton Wilderness Area when the Johnson's lease expires in 2012, but we are concerned that when a new operator takes over, they may argue otherwise. PRNS has consistently taken such actions for other potential wilderness lands, and we urge that the Johnson's Oyster site be no exception. If the oyster operation were to continue beyond 2012, it would significantly undermine the wilderness quality of the area.

A whole string of environmental problems has been documented at Johnson's in recent years. The septic leach fields, as well as the untreated raw washout from the oyster-packing facility, have polluted the estuary. The facility has constructed numerous buildings without permits on public land and trespassed on public land for commercial purposes. Its proposed importation of inadequately inspected Mexican oysters threatened biological disruption of the estero ecosystem. Customers suffered illnesses from eating oysters that did not meet health and safety codes. At various times the Park the county Building and Health and Safety Departments, and the courts ordered Johnson's to clean up its act.

The packing portion of the operation was forced to move off park land last fall after illness among consumers of Johnson's oysters triggered state Health Department inspections, which found numerous violations there. An escrow is pending that would turn the operation over to a neighboring rancher in the Seashore with a reputation for environmentally sensitive operations. That is good news for both the estuary and consumers during the remainder of the lease through 2012. Nevertheless, the Sierra Club believes that Drakes Estero is too sensitive for a permanent commercial operation. We are working with the park and the new potential owner to be sure that the oyster operation terminates smoothly in 2012.

Other Marin watersheds

Tomales Bay, with the largest watershed in Marin, has its own active watershed group, where the Sierra Club is an interested observer. In addition, the Marin Group has commented on projects for Easkoot Creek in Stinson Beach, Pine Gulch Creek in Bolinas, Olema Creek in Olema, Devils Gulch in Nicasio, and Lagunitas Creek in Point Reyes Station. You can find letters on most of these creek/watershed issues on the Marin Group website

The Group's watershed work is primarily in West Marin, where the creeks and watersheds have more endangered species and less stakeholder activity than in the rest of the county. In the rest of the county, our colleagues at Friends of Corte Madera Creek, Mill Valley Stream Keepers, Friends of Novato Creek, and other watershed groups do the primary work.

Gordon Bennett, chair, Sierra Club Marin Group