Aside from suggesting ways to fix the lagoon, the report has confused some of the people most closely associated with the project.

The report appears to suggest that as a way to share costs, Marin County could sell the lagoon to the federal government.

The reports says: "The real estate requirements for all the actions described in this report would involve a disposal site, fee acquisition of the project site (Bolinas Lagoon), land for the channel construction, and a borrow easement for removing fill material on the spit adjacent to Dipsea Road [emphasis added]...

"As the non-federal sponsor, the Marin County Open Space District would receive credit for providing project lands that are currently owned by the county."

Said a surprised Ed Ueber, manager of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, "They make it very clear that they're going to buy the lagoon.

"I don't know what the Army Corps is thinking, but that's what it sounds like. I can't see the county selling that land," said Ueber, whose sanctuary shares jurisdiction but not ownership of the lagoon.

Bewildered too is Ron Miska, the Open Space District planner in charge of managing Bolinas Lagoon: "I'm not even sure [the buy-out] is what is proposed there."

Miska wondered out loud if the report is merely saying the value of the lagoon could simply be counted as part of the county's share of the remediation cost. But, he said, "it doesn't make any sense."

In any event, he said, "it's not going anywhere. The lagoon is not going to the feds."

As for the remedial recommendations in the report, Ueber said, "There are a lot of things there that we feel will be beneficial. I'm a firm believer in removing unnatural fills."

But as to whether the ambitious project would ever be undertaken, he said, "Boy, that's a tough question. The feasibility studies haven't been done."

The feasibility study is the next phase of the Army Corps project. Essentially, it will explores the cost-effectiveness of - and the federal interest in - the restoration project. By itself, the feasibility study will cost between $2.1 million and $2.5 million.

The study will evaluate the four alternatives by themselves and in all possible combinations.

Each would increase the lagoon's tidal action, which would lead to greater scouring of the lagoon's bottom. It's the tidal scouring that would carry loose sediment out of the estuary's narrow channel at ebb tide.

In total, the four proposals would create 78 acres of additional underwater habitat and 26 acres of new intertidal habitat. The lagoon's surface area is roughly 1,100 acres.

Two of the alternatives - removing the Pine Gulch Creek delta and recreating the Kent Island channel - would work best in tandem, noted Ueber.

The trickiest alternative, in terms of both money and engineering, would be opening up and deepening Seadrift Lagoon. The Army Corps would have to acquire land from Seadrift homeowners to dig a channel under the north end of Dipsea Road. On the south end, an existing culvert would have to be enlarged.

Ueber said he believes the Seadrift Homeowners Association is "amenable" to connecting the two lagoons.

He noted that the Committee to Save Bolinas Lagoon, an ad-hoc group that for three years has been raising money and lobbying Congress for lagoon studies, was formed in part by Seadrift residents, and that they have said they'll do everything they can to save the lagoon.

"The [Army Corps] engineer probably took them at their word when he wrote his options," Ueber said.

However, John Jones, a Seadrift resident and member of the Committee to Save Bolinas Lagoon, said the Seadrift Lagoon alternative may not go over so well.

"It would raise hell with those properties along the [smaller] lagoon," Jones said, adding that Seadrift Lagoon is now managed to keep its water level consistent. Connecting the two would drain Seadrift Lagoon at low tides, reducing its recreational and perhaps aesthetic value.

Jones stressed, however, that connecting the lagoons "is not necessarily what would or could be done." It's simply an alternative to be evaluated. He said the Committee to Save Bolinas Lagoon is "staying absolutely out of" the business of choosing a remedy.

Instead, Jones said, the committee is working only on getting the feasibility study funded.

So far, the US Senate wants to spend $750,000 on the federal half of the study (As it happens, US Senator Dianne Feinstein owns a house in Seadrift). The House of Representatives has said it wants to spend just $270,000.

The two bills will now have to be reconciled, and Marin County, as the local sponsor, will have to match the federal appropriation.