A former Lagunitas couple who installed an unpermitted bridge over a tributary of San Geronimo Creek has agreed to pay $15,000 to settle a lawsuit brought against them by the county. For the former property owners, Aldo Tarigo and Adrienne Terrass, the settlement brings an end to what they viewed as an Orwellian bureaucratic nightmare. They eventually abandoned their plans to rebuild their home and moved across the country to Maine. Ms. Terrass told the Light that she and her husband spent close to $170,000, not including legal fees, trying to meet the county’s various demands before they gave up. County officials handled the case with a combination of “incompetence and malfeasance,” she said. “The lawsuit against us was the county’s way of avoiding any responsibility for staff errors,” she said. Ms. Terrass and Mr. Tarigo, an architect, moved onto the Lagunitas property in 1993. In 2006, they replaced a crumbing 12-foot-wide bridge across a five-foot span of Barranca Creek, a tributary of San Geronimo Creek, in preparation for winter storms. Mr. Tarigo said he designed the bridge, which connects the main property to two outbuildings, to comply with county codes but did not apply for a construction permit. The bridge had given out abruptly, Ms. Terrass said, and staff with the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network had warned the couple that woody debris could be released into the creek that could be fatal to coho salmon and steelhead trout. “We were strongly urged by the biologist of SPAWN to avert that possibility by acting immediately and seeking a retroactive permit to avoid prolonging the danger to wildlife during the notoriously protracted permit process,” Ms. Terrass said. “Little did we know how devastating this would be to our lives.” Several years later, the couple sought zoning approval to raze their old house and build a new one, and they sought retroactively to permit the bridge. But the county Department of Public Works concluded that the bridge did not meet county codes, and warned the couple that they could be fined $2,500 a day if it wasn’t removed. Mr. Tarigo and Ms. Terrass appealed the decision unsuccessfully to the Planning Commission and then to the Board of Supervisors. Last July, the county filed a lawsuit demanding that the couple pay for the cost of removing the bridge and all associated legal fees. The suit was brought even though a $22,000 environmental review commissioned by Mr. Tarigo and Ms. Terrass—at the county’s request—concluded that removing it would cause greater environmental impact than leaving it in place. Under the settlement, the bridge will remain in place and the couple will pay the county a $15,000 fine. The Barranca bridge legal dispute unfolded against the backdrop of a separate legal action brought against the county by the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network over Marin’s streamside development rules. The suit led to a 2012 injunction that halted development in the San Geronimo Valley while the county wrote a new ordinance for streamside regulations. Mr. Tarigo’s project was the only one underway at the time that would be affected by the new rules.