County planning commissioners voted Monday to continue
making use of an environmental study of Lawson’s Landing that began
three years ago. The decision may save the Lawson family hundreds of
thousands of dollars that otherwise would have been spent financing
a new study.
But Carl Vogler Jr., whose family has owned and operated
the Landing since the 1920s, said Monday’s small victory did little
to allay his anxiety over the campground’s future.
"It’s a state of partial confusion and
fear," Vogler said. "We’re told one thing by our lawyers
and the county – and then things move sideways."
The campground and RV park at the mouth of Tomales
Bay predates many county and state building codes. For the past 30 years,
the Lawson family and the county have been trying to work out a practical
way to bring the facility into conformity with new regulations.
To that end, the Lawson family has developed a masterplan
that proposes upgrading the campground’s septic and water systems
but not adding campsites.
County planning staff in the 1990s were initially
willing to issue the owners a "negative declaration of environmental
impact" for their upgrading the campground.
By allowing that improvements to the campground would
not harm the environment, the planning staff were going to let the owners
bypass a costly and time-consuming environmental-impact report.
However, after protests from activists such as the
Environmental Action Committee of West Marin (EAC), county planners
asked the Lawson family to pay for a full-blown Environmental Impact
Report on their masterplan proposals.
The draft EIR, which commissioners on Monday could
have sent back to the drawing board, has already cost the Lawson family
$440,000.
The study was begun in 2002 by the Sacramento consultancy
Edaw Inc. (the firm was chosen by the county, and the Lawson family
has had minimal contact with Edaw researchers). Before that, the family
paid more than $200,000 for a preliminary environmental review of their
property.
A final EIR incorporating public comments on the draft
version has yet to be completed.
Decades of delay
"I don’t know what the rules are
anymore," campground co-owner Nancy Vogler told planning commissioners.
"I feel like I’ve been misled. I thought there was an end
to this. Silly me."
Vogler cited the several revisions of the project
master plan and multiple rounds of environmental studies required by
planning staff during the last two decades as indicative of a review
process drawn out too long.
Commissioners at their last meeting postponed approval
of the masterplan’s EIR on grounds they didn’t have enough
information about how many people use the campground.
Another delay, Vogler told commissioners, was unacceptable.
"Now what I’m hearing is that you commissioners aren’t
happy with the EIR and want to start again from square one," she
said.
"It will take another chunk off my age –
and hundreds of thousands of dollars – and I don’t know if
I’m going to live that long."
Former county supervisor and Coastal Commissioner
Gary Giacomini, the owners’ attorney, implored planning commissioners
to expedite the environmental-review process and begin discussing the
merits of the campground’s masterplan.
"If you’re whimsical about this, that’s
$500,000 of value wasted," Giacomini said. "I’ve had
five grandchildren born while the county has frittered around with this.
Great God Almighty, get the EIR out of the way, so we can move on to
the merits."
‘Where can we go?’
More than 100 of the campground’s regular
visitors, many of whose families have been coming to the campground
over several generations, turned out to show their support for Lawson’s
Landing.
Some drove to the meeting from as far as Placer County.
All wore bright red, green, and yellow stickers emblazoned with the
phrase: "I love Lawson’s Landing."
Robert King, a Sacramento resident who has a permanent
trailer at Lawson’s, said before the meeting that public access
to the coast is at stake in the debate over Lawson’s Landing.
The campground’s affordable rates have traditionally
attracted a middleclass clientele, he said.
"It’s fine if you’re a multimillionaire,"
King said. "You can own your home in Pebble Beach or Malibu. But
for the rest of us, where can we go? There’s no place left."
Campground size questioned
Commissioners at their last meeting questioned
the EIR’s estimate of the campground’s level of use, which
is to be incorporated as the "baseline" of the draft environmental
study.
In 1992, the state housing department, with the county’s
consent, issued the landing a permit to operate 1,000 campsites and
233 trailers.
But environmental activists have argued the full extent
of the operation is less than the 1,000 campsites and 233 trailers,
along with 200 day visitors, being cited as the baseline of current
use cited in the EIR. They claim the masterplan would grandfather in
parts of the campground that may be damaging surrounding sand dunes
and wetlands.
"If the baseline is untrammeled paradise, the
[improvements proposed in the masterplan] will have a huge impact,"
Catherine Caufield, executive director of the EAC, told the commission.
"If the baseline is everything that you’re asking for, the
project has no impact."
County environmental planning coordinator Tim Haddad
told commissioners that a long history of state case law has established
that a project’s baseline is its maximum level of use at the time
of environmental review.
Next battle
Giacomini told The Light that the real
goal of environmental activists is to wear down the family’s resolve
and empty their pockets by prolonging the environmental review process,
hence preventing planning commissioners from giving the masterplan an
up-or-down vote.
EAC director Caufield’s "real game is to
kill it," Giacomini said. "They’re abusing the California
Environmental Quality Act process."
"Everyone wants to move this along," Caufield
counters. "It’s dragged on for more than 40 years. We don’t
want it to be the environment that pays the bill for the county’s
delays."
Despite a 5-2 vote to move forward with the present
EIR, several commissioners said that they will probably reject the final
version of the EIR because of the baseline controversy, the report’s
failure to map wetlands around the property, and an insufficient evaluation
of the campground’s septic system.
Commissioners Randy Greenberg, Don Dickenson, and
Wade Holland predicted that the final EIR would be inadequate, and would
have to be revised. Such a decision, Giacomini said, would be "as
bad" as a decision by commissioners to delay the approval process.
"That’s our next battle," Giacomini
said. "We’ve got our work cut out for us."