A Marin Superior Court judge awarded over $148,000 in legal fees to the Turtle Island Restoration Network earlier this month, to be paid by both Marin County and the owners of an embattled property at the center of a lawsuit.
The ruling follows a judgment last fall that sided with the nonprofit in a dispute involving whether the construction of a house near Woodacre Creek necessitated an environmental impact report, a lengthy process that is required by state law when projects create significant environmental impacts.
Turtle Island filed the suit after the county greenlighted the construction last year of a 1,900-square-foot home and septic system on Redwood Drive in Woodacre, at a property owned by James and Matthew Murray. Plans for the home were initially filed over a decade ago, but the project was delayed for multiple reasons, including a landslide beside the property that closed Redwood Drive. The plans have since been withdrawn from the county.
Concerns about the project arose from multiple parties last year, including the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network (TIRN is its parent organization). SPAWN worried about the project’s impacts on slope stability and erosion, which could affect salmon and the ecological function of the creek. A neighbor worried the project would further destabilize the slope and threaten his own home, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife also expressed concerns about the creek.
But county staffers maintained that the project was safe, convincing the Board of Supervisors to allow it.
Yet in his October ruling, Judge Paul Haakenson wrote that Turtle Island “met its burden of proof showing that substantial evidence supports a fair argument that the Murray project may have significant geologic and watershed projects” and that an E.I.R. was warranted.
Todd Steiner, executive director of SPAWN, said last week that the project was a particularly egregious example of the county approving projects near streams without analyzing the cumulative impacts of development in the valley, were the area built out completely.
“Our concern is that the county continues to approve development along the stream and along the creeks willy-nilly, one at a time, without looking at the cumulative impact of their policy that allows development to occur,” he said. “As long as they continue to do that, we will continue to challenge them in court and try to compel them to basically follow the law. It’s really simple.”
The $148,000 that Judge Haakenson ordered the county and the Murrays to pay TIRN was less than requested. Still, Mr. Steiner said the awarding of lawyer fees is important because “99 percent of our budget goes to restoration. One percent goes to monitoring and watchdogging…The law gives citizens the ability to watchdog government, because otherwise we couldn’t afford to file these lawsuits.” (In 2015, a judge also ordered the county to pay TIRN about $650,000 in attorney fees.)
County counsel Brian Washington said the county is unsure whether it will appeal. “We have not yet decided whether to appeal the Superior Court decision in the Turtle Island Restoration Network v. County of Marin (Murray),” he wrote in an email. “As the decision was about a proposed single family home, the ruling does not have broad implications for [Marin].”
The county is currently developing a cumulative impact analysis, though SPAWN has criticized the drawn-out process, which a judge ordered in 2014. Tom Lai, assistant director of the Community Development Agency, said the department is working to release the final analysis this month.