Tomales Bay - don't blame the wildlife

President Reagan made himself notorious by blaming air pollution on trees. Now a few Tomales Bay landowners seem to be following in his footsteps by blaming the Bay's problems on wildlife.

Tomales Bay (in West Marin) is used for kayaking, fishing, swimming, and oyster cultivation, but its waters too often contain pathogens that cause beach closures after every rain and suspension of oyster production for over 70 days each year. In 1998 an illness of human fecal origin affected 171 people who had consumed Tomales Bay oysters, and this year saw another outbreak.

The health concern can be gauged by counting fecal coliform bacteria. Water containing fewer than 200 coliform per milliliter is considered safe for all uses, including swimming and fishing. In Point Reyes National Seashore watersheds that contain only wildlife, 30-day average coliform counts consistently remain under 200, but other watersheds with primarily agricultural or residential uses have coliform counts in the hundreds of thousands.

The federal Clean Water Act requires the Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB) to identify waters that do not comply with water-quality standards and establish Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) to ensure that waters are safe for the public to use. A TMDL expresses the total pollutant load that a water body can receive and still meet water-quality standards. TMDLs must allow for the modest coliform contributions from wildlife, but polluters in the watershed must clean up their discharges - whatever the contribution from wildlife.

The human sources of pathogens into Tomales Bay, such as residential septic systems and dairy and cattle operations, are easily identified. Unfortunately some interests in the watershed are blaming wildlife for the problem. They claim that they cannot afford to clean up the problem, and therefore that the public must simply avoid swimming or eating oysters while they are polluting. They want to delay setting and implementing the TMDLs until genetic testing can determine how many of the coliforms are contributed by wildlife. The Sierra Club believes that we have sufficient information for setting standards now. Wildlife tourism, fishing, and water-oriented recreation are primary contributors to the coastal economy. The public deserves clean and safe beaches.

The RWQCB should encourage responsible management of pathogen discharges through an appropriate combination of carrots and sticks. Some forward-thinking dairy and grazing operators have made progress in restoring riparian buffers and taking other measures that significantly reduce pathogen discharges into Tomales Bay. The shoreline community of Marshall is taking steps to establish community-based residential septic monitoring and has made progress in fixing systems found to be defective. Long-term monitoring to date, however, has shown essentially no progress in reducing human-caused pathogen levels in the Tomales Bay watershed. We fear that the publicized efforts by responsible agriculturists and homeowners are being offset by unpublicized carelessness elsewhere.

Establishment of a reasonable TMDL program by the RWQCB opens the door to grants that can help solve the funding problems. Many of the problems can be solved by simple common-sense approaches. Agriculturists and homeowners can band together to establish locally controlled monitoring, as Stinson Beach has done and Marshall is exploring. What's important is to get started. The Sierra Club encourages everyone in the watershed to become part of the solution.

What You Can Do

Write to:
Regional Water Quality Control Board
San Francisco Bay Region
1515 Clay St., #1400
Oakland, CA 94612
Attn: Rebecca Tuden
(btuden@waterboards.ca.gov)

Urge the Board, without delay, to adopt staff's proposals for the TMDL for pathogens in Tomales Bay, including the goal of 200 coliforms allowable for safe water contact in the tributaries. Urge the Board to continue working to control the cow manure and septic runoff that cause beach closures and shut down oyster operations.

Gordon Bennett, chair, Sierra Club Marin Group