Bolinas Lagoon

Lagoon report predicts loss of birds & seals

By David Rolland

Officials with the County Open Space District have released a long-awaited update of the Bolinas Lagoon Management Plan, a draft that will guide any rehabilitation of the shrinking estuary.

The plan warns that rapid sedimentation is choking the lagoon, and that the estuary is shrinking at a steadily increasing rate.

By 2008, the lagoon's salt-marsh habitat is predicted to quadruple its size in 1988. In the same time, the subtidal habitat will decrease 80 percent, the plan predicts.

Diving birds disappear Meanwhile, the number of diving birds dependent on food under the surface will shrink while the population of shore birds will grow.

"By 2008, the lagoon will likely be a significantly less valuable migration and overwintering location on the Pacific Flyway, where estuarine habitats have already suffered huge losses and degradation," the summary reads.

In addition, "while harbor seal populations have increased, at some point the loss of channels and overall access will deter seals from using the lagoon," the summary adds.

The plan lists five alternatives for countering sedimentation:

Reduce the flow of sediment by better managing the surrounding hillsides and agricultural land.

Dredge selected locations in the lagoon where unnatural fill has accumulated.

Restore Pine Gulch Creek, which feeds the north end of the lagoon.

Clear the mouth of the lagoon, to increase the incoming and outgoing tide's ability to scour the estuary.

Dig a channel between Bolinas Lagoon and the smaller, manmade Seadrift Lagoon located in the center of the adjacent Seadrift subdivision, which would improve tidal scouring.

The plan notes that large-scale dredging is also an option. "Removal of approximately 1.4 million cubic yards of accumulated sediment would restore the lagoon's tidal [scouring] to 1968 levels."

However, "dredging may result in substantial adverse impacts from potential threats to particularly sensitive marine resources."

Document scarce Although the conclusions come as no surprise, the county seems in no hurry to let the public know exactly what's in the 166-page document.

Citing a shriveling budget, Open Space District planners printed only a few dozen copies of the plan -- and declined to send one to The Light or any other newspaper.

Instead, the county faxed The Light a nine-page "executive summary" of the plan.

Copies of the study were sent to local libraries, but with 78 copies printed, one would think local newspapers "would make the cut," said Burr Heneman, an alternate member of the Bolinas Technical Advisory Committee.

Heneman added that he has solicited a donation from the Jennifer Altman Foundation to print 100 more copies.

Budget overshot Ron Miska, planner for the Open Space District, said so few copies were printed because the project has already exceeded its $57,000 budget by "seven or eight thousand dollars." (Actual printing cost per copy runs $9.)

Miska, however, earlier refused an offer by the Committee to Save Bolinas Lagoon to pay for extra copies for the public.

He explained this week that he declined the offer because such arrangement the between the county and private lobbying group might appear to be a conflict of interest.

The study also recommends that more studies be done before any remedies are pursued. Such studies, including environmental-impact reports, would cost an estimated $1.5 million.

Enough paper-pushing However, some critics argue that the lagoon has been studied enough -- and that more research would be a waste of money.

"There's a lot of reinventing of the wheel that's going on," Stinson Beach's Hugh Dougherty said last Wednesday.

Dougherty, who in the mid-1960s was a county planning commissioner and a director of Audubon Canyon Ranch, said that in 1971, the Nature Conservancy did extensive studies of the lagoon, including options for rehabilitating it.

Those and other studies, he said, should provide the Army Corps with enough data to devise a rehabilitation plan.

The old Nature Conservancy study, which Dougherty said took 18 months to complete, examined the lagoon's plant and animal life and hydrology, and compared the lagoon's waters to the waters offshore of Stinson Beach and Bolinas Peninsula.

Old study sufficient "It should be fairly accurate," Dougherty said. "They wrote a good report."

He added that unrelated studies at about the same time were done by a private architect -- who recommended dredging around the lagoon's perimeter -- and by a biologist with UC Marine Laboratory who argued for selective dredging.

The former planning commissioner said he doesn't think the studies are too outdated to be useful. "I don't think the lagoon has changed substantially," he said. "It has changed a small amount."

However, two members of the Bolinas Lagoon Technical Advisory Committee this week defended efforts to raise money for further study.

New work needed Geologist Joel Bergquist of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park argues that studies are needed specifically concerning the future of the lagoon.

Bergquist, who with late geologist Clyde Wahrhaftig, mainly analyzed the changing contours of the lagoon in 1968, 1978, and 1988, claims that existing studies are outdated.

While he said he hasn't read the Nature Conservancy's work, he asked rhetorically, "Would you rely on 30-year-old medical advice?"

Old study unscientific Stinson Beach resident Andrea diMarco, as she flipped through the old study, said, "There's nothing like real scientific studies here."

DiMarco, an original member of the Technical Advisory Committee, said the 35-page booklet merely suggests longterm management strategy, but does not discuss removing sediment.

"This is nothing that would qualify scientifically like the work Joel and Clyde have done," diMarco said.

Bergquist stressed that an Army Corps plan will not necessarily include dredging. At this point, he added, he prefers some "sediment removal" project that may simply be limited to raking up sediment at the ebb tide so that it can be washed out to sea.

Congress mulls funding A private group called the Committee to Save Bolinas Lagoon -- started last year by some residents of the adjacent Seadrift subdivision -- has been lobbying Congress for money to reverse the sedimentation that has increasingly silted in the lagoon.

In July, the Senate passed a bill that would spend $500,000 on lagoon study, while the House passed a bill with no money attached. The two versions should go to a Senate-House conference committee by the end of this week.

The first public hearing on the draft management plan will be held at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 2, in the Audubon Canyon Ranch meeting room, 4800 Highway 1, north of Stinson Beach.

Written comments can be mailed until Oct. 16 to the Open Space District, 3501 Civic Center Drive, Room 417, Civic Center, San Rafael, 94903.

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