For quite some time, Bolinas fisherman Josh Churchman has wanted somebody to dredge the drying-up channel behind Bolinas Lagoon's Kent Island.

Last Friday, his proposal finally received some support - albeit lukewarm - from the Bolinas Lagoon Technical Advisory Committee.

Members of the committee voted to support the idea as long as Churchman goes through the proper channels. They urged him to have a hydrologist to draw up a proposal and submit it to the Gulf of the Farallones Marine Sanctuary as a "research project."

County Supervisor Steve Kinsey said at the meeting that he would be happy to help the project along. The county owns the lagoon.

"If [the advisory committee] sees this as an important step, the county is not going to be an impediment," Kinsey said.

However, Churchman is losing patience with talk of hydrologists and research projects.

"I just want to see something happen," he said. "Nothing happening is what I see happening right now. I would welcome something one step above nothing."

Churchman said he simply wants the committee and others concerned about the lagoon's health to work together on the small but vital project, although he doesn't necessarily want to take on the task himself. "I'm just shooting in the dark," he told the committee.

Churchman recalled a frustrating round of telephone calls to a tangle of government agencies with jurisdiction over the lagoon: the Gulf of the Farallones Marine Sanctuary supported the plan but told him to talk to a hydrologist; hydrologist Phil Williams liked the idea, but said he needed a nod from the Army Corps of Engineers; the Army Corps referred the matter to the county, who Churchman said was no help at all.

The fisherman said more than a dozen people in downtown Bolinas have ap

proached him and wondered out loud if the time for "civil disobedience" has come. He said some have suggested a throng armed with buckets might take matters into their own hands.

Committee member Skip Schwartz of Audubon Canyon Ranch responded, "You can remove it in ignorance. Is that what you're advocating?"

Churchman stressed that it wasn't his idea.

Committee member George Domurat of the Army Corps of Engineers noted the harsh realities of doing work in a heavily protected sanctuary for birds and marine mammals: "The removal of one bucket of sand needs an EIS [Environmental Impact Statement]."

Committee member Ralph Camiccia on Wednesday said he understands Churchman's frustration, but added that caution is not necessarily evil when it comes to protecting the lagoon's biology.

"At one time, that's the way things were done, but times have changed, and we have to work within the boundaries that have been set," Camiccia said.

"We are in support of his attempt to do some preliminary work on that channel," he added, but if Churchman could be patient for five years or so, "we're going to see some work done here."

Camiccia noted that the Army Corps is in the midst of preliminary lagoon studies and that the channel behind Kent Island would likely benefit from the anticipated remediation work.

More specifically, the Army Corps is in the "reconnaissance" phase, which takes six months to a year and involves reviewing past studies of the lagoon and establishing a legal agreement with a partner agency to share the cost of any lagoon work. In this case, Marin County is the partner.

The next step would be a two- to three-year "feasibility study," an Army Corps report that would list alternatives for saving the lagoon from silting up and make a recommendation.

Once that's done, the Army Corps would ask Congress to fund actual lagoon work.

The problem, said Supervisor Kinsey on Wednesday, is that the county is dirt poor and could not come up with the $1.25 million needed to share in the cost of the feasibility study with the federal government.

"If we don't find some magical alternative here, this thing is going to die a quick death on the vine," Kinsey

warned.

The supervisor noted that Clem Whitaker, lobbyist for the Stinson Beach-based Committee to Save Bolinas Lagoon, is trying to persuade Congress to pay for the entire study.

Kinsey added he will likely ask the state Coastal Commission if there is some company or agency that might be asked to pay the county's share as mitigation for development somewhere on the coast.

Meanwhile, state Assemblywoman Kerry Mazzoni at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, July 12, will be at Stinson Beach's Firehouse No. 2 on Calle del Arroyo to announce the state Legislature's resolution to declare Bolinas Lagoon a "state and national treasure."

The declaration "urges the president and Congress of the United States to appropriate federal funds to be used to preserve and protect the Bolinas Lagoon."

Pre-registration is required, 663-1200.