A group of environmental activists are mounting a
legal attack on state and county government and in doing so are threatening
the survival of the oldest organic farm in California.
The Tomales Bay Association headed by Ken Fox of Olema
claims county government and the Coastal Commission did not require
enough environmental studies before allowing the farmer to make environmental
improvements to five acres of his land in Bolinas.
The case is scheduled to go before Superior Court
Judge Michael Dufficy on Nov. 10.
Standing on the five-acre plot lying between Olema-Bolinas
Road and Bolinas Lagoon, organic farmer Warren Weber absently peeled
the outer leaves from a bright purple head of cabbage and listed the
crops in front of him: pumpkins, sunflowers, spinach, artichokes, squash
– and, of course, cabbage.
"This piece [of land] has a history of growing
some very nice crops over the years," Weber said. Today, he added,
produce grown on the five acres makes up roughly 12 percent of his business.
But Weber can no longer take that 12 percent for granted.
The Tomales Bay Association has gone to court, claiming the County of
Marin and the California Coastal Commission failed require enough environmental
studies before issuing permits for irrigation pipes underneath the road
and altering his dikes to suit the Army Corps of Engineers.
Upsetting the activist group was Weber’s acceding
to a US Army Corps of Engineers directive to restore a wetlands and
then getting the permits to do so. In 1997, the corps decided that Weber
may have violated the Clean Water Act by digging drainage ditches along
his property and piling the fill atop old dikes.
Those old dikes, Weber says, date from the nineteenth
century – protecting farmland from lagoon waters at high tide.
Weber settled the matter the following year by agreeing to remove the
fill.
When he sought permits for the work from county government,
however, members of the Tomales Bay Association went before the county
Planning Commission to oppose him – to the bafflement of some commissioners.
Gripe baffles planners
"I don’t see how removing the dikes compromises
the county’s responsibility to its wetlands," then-Commissioner
Ross Herbertson remarked, and the restoration work was given a green
light by the county and coastal commission.
In 2004, the Tomales Bay Association announced that
it was suing both agencies, and as a result of that lawsuit, the planned
wetland restoration has had to be postponed.
"This is such a waste of taxpayers’ money
and time," Weber said. "The only object they have seem to
have in mind is to prevent me from using the property in any way."
Association president Fox, in turn, told The Light
he’s only asking that the law be obeyed.
"The county has done everyone a disservice by
not simply following the law in the first place," he said. "I
think they could have come up with a solution that everyone could have
lived with. The county’s unwillingness to deal with their own regulatory
responsibilities is what has put us all in this position."
Oldest organic farm
Weber’s operation, Star Route Farms, is the oldest
certified organic farm in the state. The farm totals 100 acres, of which
11 are protected by the dikes. Of the 11, only five are actually farmed.
The six acres bordering Bolinas Lagoon lie fallow, though Weber mows
the fields to provide habitat for small shorebirds.
"I respect Weber for what he’s done in terms
of organics," insisted Tomales Bay Association president Fox. "He
stands out in that. We’re certainly not trying to put him out of
business."
In small farming operation, Weber responded, the loss
of five acres "is a big deal. We don’t really have the ability
to expand somewhere else."
Weber said that the association’s real goal is
to end all farming in his fields on the lagoon side of Olema-Bolinas
Road. To this Fox responded, the land would be "most productive"
as a wetland than a farm.
"It would be nice to have that property go to
the highest usage, which is as a wetland," Fox said, adding that
he doubted the property was profitable for farming because of the influx
of saltwater tides from the lagoon.
Weber disagrees. In the late 1990s, he said, soil
scientists from the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service concluded
that the five acres of the field he cultivates are "prime ag soil."
Saltwater tides, he added, have never reached the portion of the land
on which his crops lie, even though the dikes – primitive and breached
in many places – do nothing to stop the water from rising into
part of the field.
As for his irrigation system, Weber said that even
if the county did find problems with the pipes running under Olema-Bolinas
Road, they would be easy to fix – and certainly don’t call
for a lawsuit.
"If we do need a permit, we’ll take care
of it," Weber said. "We can pull [the pipes] up, or abandon
them, or whatever they want us to do. If there’s anything the county’s
overlooked. That would be easy to remedy."
Lawsuit rapped
Tomales Bay Association’s litigation has drawn
confusion and criticism from some elected officials and fellow environmentalists.
"It’s absolutely incomprehensible to me,"
said Phyllis Faber, a wetlands biologist, former coastal commissioner,
and co-founder of Marin Agricultural Land Trust. "I think it’s
counterproductive. To pick away at Warren Weber, who really is a great
steward [of the land], and not look at the big picture, is disappointing."
Supervisor Steve Kinsey said he was "disappointed
that the association has taken such a narrow view of their stewardship
responsibilities on this particular issue.
"We don’t want to try to restore habitat
at the expense of an endangered part of our economic and cultural tradition
in West Marin," Kinsey said. "Managers of the ecological resources
at the Bolinas Lagoon should take a long view, and not a short view."