Point Reyes Light - October 25, 2001
Environmental groups appeal writers’ studios
By Daniel Freed
Local environmental leaders on Monday appealed a decision by county planning commissioners last week to allow the continued operation of Mesa Refuge writers retreat in Point Reyes Station.
The appeal was filed by Catherine Caufield of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin and was co-signed by representatives of the Tomales Bay Association, the Point Reyes Station Village Association, the Sierra Club Marin Group, the Bolinas Lagoon Watershed Team, and the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network. It is expected to be considered by county supervisors within the next six weeks.
The environmentalists were disappointed by a late-night decision by planning commissioners which called for the removal of only one of three writer’s sheds that sit on a mesa overlooking the south end of Tomales Bay.
"We are trying to have the law and the values behind the law honored," Caufield said Tuesday.
Founder objects to appeal
Peter Barnes, who provided San Francisco’s Tides Foundation with the land and money to build the retreat, told The Light that he had hoped the commissioners’ permission of the operation would be allowed to stand.
"I’m very disappointed," he said. "I think the commission’s 4-0 decision was a reasonable compromise. It allows Mesa Refuge to continue with a little disruption. I think this has gone on long enough."
But Caufield rejected Barnes’s call for compromise. "Nature in California and West Marin has been compromised for the last 100 years. We’re trying to protect the little that’s left," she said.
Mesa Refuge allows writers working for social-justice and environmental change free stays for up to four weeks in a residence that Barnes and his wife Leyna Bernstein purchased in 1997. A director of Greenpeace International, Barnes has earned large sums of money creating credit card and long-distance phone companies.
County government red-tagged the project in April 1998 while it was still being developed at 9 and 11 Los Reyes Drive. Barnes said he built the sheds to comply with building code regulations allowing structures under 120 square feet to be erected without permits.
Need to protect habitat
Caufield and others have countered that the sheds – while an asset to environmental writers who work at Mesa Refuge – violate county codes meant to protect streamside habitats and the animals that live within them.
The environmentalists’ appeal cites the county’s failure to enforce protection of streamside conservation areas, wetland buffer areas, and a buffer zone around the bluff. In addition, it claims that a conclusion by the county that the project could be brought into compliance with environmental laws was "wrongly adopted" because mitigation measures proposed to lessen negative environmental impacts were "dropped or are in conflict with other county requirements and cannot be enacted."
The appellants cited several aspects of the Mesa Refuge permit that are inconsistent with county codes or cannot be enforced, including:
• Allowing year-round use of the sheds.
• Permitting decks attached to the sheds.
• Prohibiting nighttime lighting of the sheds and limiting their use to daylight hours only, measures which the appeal calls "unenforceable and unrealistic."
• Prohibiting plumbing in the structures, a stipulation which the appeal says contradicts county requirements for fire-prevention sprinklers.
• Approving the retreat’s permits in perpetuity, when an application was made for only two year permits.
• Not mandating that the sheds be removed if the property is sold or transferred.
The appeal specifically calls upon county supervisors to recognize nearby Tomasini Creek – which is a diverted waterway – as a genuine "blue-line" stream and to recognize willows on the bluff as streamside vegetation. Planning commissioners last week did not clearly define if they were giving the creek blue-line status. Barnes, in his remarks to commissioners, insisted that the waterway was a "stagnant, polluted, manmade water channel," and was therefore not subject to protection under the county’s blue-line-stream-protection policy.
A creek is a creek
But Caufield noted this week that almost all of California’s once natural streams have been modified in some way by humans. Tomasini Creek, she said, was moved by rancher Waldo Giacomini in the late 1950’s to open new pasture land on his ranch. She insisted that human intervention does not change the fact that the creek is a waterway which supports different species.
The appeal also notes that last week’s decision failed to recognize that "willow vegetation on the property is riparian, is associated with Tomasini Creek, and is hydrologically linked to Tomasini Creek."
A decision by supervisors to recognize the blue-line status of the waterway at the bluff’s edge and the riparian nature of vegetation along the bluff would, under county code, necessitate removal of all three sheds.
Planning commissioners based their decision about the streamside status of the property’s plants upon the testimony of Jim Martin, who was hired by planning staff to prepare a biological evaluation of the Mesa Refuge project. He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from UC Berkeley and has over 20 years of experience as a biologist and environmental consultant.
Panel ignored testimony
In upholding Martin’s conclusion that willows on the property were not associated with Tomasini Creek, commissioners bypassed contradictory testimony by several speakers. Wildlife biologist and EAC president Jules Evens of Point Reyes Station, Phyllis Faber, author of two books about California plants, and Todd Keeler-Wolf, Ph.D., a vegetation ecologist for the state Department of Fish and Game, all said they believed the trees were riparian vegetation.
The appeal also notes that wetlands near Mesa Refuge only allow use of the land which "is dependent upon the resources of the wetland within the wetland buffer area."
Commissioners last week allowed two of the sheds to remain on the mesa regardless of their location within a buffer zone designated by the Point Reyes Station Community Plan. This decision, commissioners noted, was based upon the fact that the sheds were constructed in 1998, three years before the community plan was amended to include the bluff buffer-zone policy.
Thought sheds were legal
The appeal, however, states that Barnes "only filed for permits after red-tagging [by the county]. Ignorance of the law does not excuse him. Here, the common good achieved by the new rule (bluff protection and buffer zone for future wetlands) outweighs concern for equity."
Barnes noted at the hearing last week that a consultation with county building officials left him under the impression that the sheds were in fact legal.
He disagreed this week with the appeal’s assertion that the county code – amended in 2001 – could be applied to the sheds which were built in 1998. "Ex-post fact rulings are unconstitutional," he said.
Caufield and the other appellants also noted that protection of the bluff is granted by the development plan for the Los Reyes subdivision and by zoning regulations which call for development on the least environmentally sensitive portion of a parcel.
Inspiration lost?
Barnes, and many supporters of Mesa Refuge, have stressed that removal, or even relocation, of the three sheds off the bluff would dissipate – or even eliminate – the inspiration the project provides visiting writers.
Caufield and other opponents argued that the site should be returned to its previous state as an uninterrupted transition between wetland and upland habitats on Tomales Bay.
"We’re speaking for the fish and the environment," said Caufield. "West Marin is extraordinary for the diversity it still has. That’s why we’re trying to get the protection this area is entitled to."