The Light this week interviewed both candidates for Fourth District supervisor, Dotty LeMieux and Steve Kinsey. The same questions were asked of each candidate, and the interviews were equally timed. What follows is an interview with LeMieux. The interview with Kinsey will be published next week. The election will be held Tuesday, Nov. 5.

In her second bitterly fought quest for county supervisor, attorney Dotty LeMieux of Bolinas has again painted herself as the candidate best suited to protect West Marin from environmental degradation.

However, in her zeal to make the environment the main campaign issue, she has had to repeatedly insist that she is not "a one-issue candidate."

LeMieux, 48, wants to beef up the county's fire-prevention efforts, decrease use of the county jail through alternative sentencing, and improve mass transit.

She said she's going to vote for Measure A, which would increase the county sales tax to finance Marin Agricultural Land Trust, city parks and county open space. And she's a director of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin.

LeMieux has for 23 years rented a home in Bolinas, where she lives with her partner, arborist and volunteer firefighter Ray Moritz. She has no children.

In an interview Monday at Civic Center, here's what she had to say about agriculture, social services, the Lucasfilm expansion, low-cost housing, the West Marin Sanitary Landfill, and protection of ranchland on the Marshall shore of Tomales Bay:

She would work with the county agricultural commissioner and the University of California extension office in Novato to help local growers and ranchers looking to diversify.

"We need to diversify agriculture in order for agriculture to survive," she said. "The dairy industry is not going to survive on its own without some kind of help."

She stressed that it takes a while for new markets to take hold. "You just can't measure agricultural success in one year," she said. "The farmer's market has been in existence for what, two years? It's a long term thing."

In any case, LeMieux said, "the county needs to be a partner, doing whatever we can. There's plenty of market for good-quality, locally grown food if we can get the information out to people."

She believes the project is inconsistent with what the plan says is allowed for Big Rock Ranch, which is zoned for agriculture, and Grady Ranch, which is zoned for low-density housing.

"I think they were wrong," she said, arguing that the county's loose reading of the plan creates "what I feel is a loophole for other projects that might not be as nice.

"But on the merits of the project itself versus something else that might be there," she said, "on balance it's a good project. But I wish that they would have gone through the process a little more carefully."

Although she'd tighten up on developers, she'd loosen up on those who want to provide low-rent housing. If elected, LeMieux would support retooling building codes to allow alternative and inexpensive types of construction such as "straw-bale" and "rammed-earth."

She would explore cooperative housing and help nonprofits that build affordable housing whenever possible. LeMieux criticized the building subdivisions for affluent homebuyers "and then throwing in a couple of units of affordable housing."

We need to look at conversion of some of these big homes and [encourage] second units - the real second units - not the kind where somebody wants to build a house the size of the house they live in."

She proposed "some kind of rent control on second units to make sure that they are low cost."

"I do believe we do have problems with the landfill creating pollution downstream," she said, adding she's skeptical about the Regional Water Quality Control Board's allowing more garbage to be buried at the dump for another year.

"I think you err on the side of caution when you're talking about environmental concerns," she said. "[The regional water board] doesn't know what adding to the landfill over the next year is going to do. There have certainly been persuasive arguments from the engineer who works for Waste Watch, Gene Kojan, that there is more of a problem that the regional board wants to say there is."

As for the future route of West Marin's waste, she was non-committal: "There are more questions left unanswered than there are answered."

She said she appreciated Supervisor Gary Giacomini's partial solution to chip in $100,000 of county money to make sure environmental studies are done at the dump, but she said it's the landfill owners' responsibility to cover their own unpaid debts.

LeMieux doesn't rule out the idea of breaking the county's franchise agreement with Shoreline Disposal. "There's nothing that says Shoreline has to be the hauler," she said.

"If Shoreline cannot deliver the [lowest cost] service that they've contracted to deliver in the franchise agreement, the county has the option to break that agreement. That is an option that has to be kept on the table."

"I support the bill," she said. "I think it provides protection for the ranchers. For those ranchers that are serious about remaining in ranching, it offers them the ability to do that by letting the government [purchase] the development rights. It would take a financial burden off them."

LeMieux in 1992 opposed an open-space tax under which Marin landowners would pay $25 per parcel annually to preserve open space via MALT, calling "the goal...laudable" but the measure a "hastily proposed measure [that] appears to be a ploy on the party of Supervisor Giacomini to garner environmental support for his reelection."

This week the candidate said she felt the timing of the earlier MALT measure was poor because a 1990 poll had shown only 57 percent of county voters supported it while a two-thirds vote was needed for approval. The measure ultimately lost by less than four percent.