Just a week before the California Coastal Commission is set to vote on a key portion of the county’s Local Coastal Program update, disagreements remain over regulations around agriculture and other coastal resources. Lingering debate—particularly over agricultural dwellings and permits for switching between different types of agriculture—led supervisors to give the Community Development Agency the option to pull portions of the plan before a commission vote.
The Local Coastal Program, which governs development, the environment and agriculture in 75 square miles of the county’s coastline, is in the process of being updated for the first time since the original program was approved in 1982. Over two thirds of Marin’s coastal zone is zoned for agriculture.
Last May the commission approved, with some amendments, a new land use plan, which outlines broad policies. Last Friday, the commission released a staff report on the county’s implementation plan, which constitutes the specific language in the development code to implement those policies. The hearing for the I.P. is in just one week, on April 16. If approved, both the land use and implementation plans would go to the Board of Supervisors for approval or rejection.
But the process might be delayed; on Tuesday morning, county supervisors approved a resolution that allows the director of the Community Development Agency to pull portions of the implementation plan from the commission’s consideration, to give the two staffs more time to hammer out ongoing disputes.
“The good news,” said Brian Crawford, the director of the C.D.A., “is that over the last several years and several months we’ve been able to resolve a large number” of issues. But, he said, there are “a limited number of substantive issues” still being worked on.
He hopes they can be resolved by April 16. “However, if we find that [the commission] is posed to taken an action at next week’s meeting that runs counter to Marin County’s interest,” Mr. Crawford wants the ability to pull some pieces to try to find more common ground.
Amy Trainer, the executive director of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, objected to the move on Tuesday, saying during public comment it appeared “against the public process.” Instead, she said, the commission should consider the whole I.P., after which the supervisors would have a chance to accept or reject the document.
Agricultural dwellings
One of the major issues the commission staff tackled in the I.P. centers on allowances for farmhouses and intergenerational homes on agricultural land.
For over three decades, most agriculturally zoned legal lots in the coastal zone could have only one house. Groups like the Marin County Farm Bureau lobbied for more. Sometimes, multiple generations want to live and work on the land; other times, a rancher might want to retire and pass on operations to a child without having to give up his or her home.
In the land use plan submitted by the county to the commission two years ago, the county proposed that farms be allowed one primary home, called a farmhouse, and up to two intergenerational homes. The county capped the total square footage of all homes at 7,000 square feet. (In other words, if an owner built two homes at 3,500 square feet, he or she would have maxed out the allowance.)
The county’s build-out analysis of its original submittal said that the plan allowed a maximum of 83 new farmhouses and 27 intergenerational homes. So the land use plan capped the number of intergenerational units allowed in the coastal zone at 27.
That analysis assumed that each legal lot could have its own farmhouse. (A legal lot is different than an assessor’s parcel, a source of the public’s confusion during last year’s land use plan hearing, according to commission staff. Often, legal lots consist of multiple assessor’s parcels for tax purposes, but that does not mean a land division has transpired.)
But last May, the commission approved a land use plan with limits placed on the ranch owner or operator, rather than on legal lots—that is, a rancher could build only one farmhouse and up to two intergenerational homes, regardless of how many legal lots he or she possesses.
Commission staff undertook its own build-out analysis given that limit, though that analysis used some different variables. The staff found the approved land use policy could allow a maximum of 48 farmhouses and, given the approved square footage cap, 27 intergenerational homes. Without that cap, it said that 98 intergenerational homes would have been possible.
Some have construed the limit on landowners—as opposed to the land—as too restrictive. In a March letter from the Marin Conservation League, which commented on a draft version of the implementation plan, the nonprofit told commission staff that it was “tantamount to a forced merger… As a rancher explained in our work sessions, to avoid losing the economic value of adjacent legal lots, a rancher would simply sell off the adjacent legal lots or put the title in a different name before building an intergenerational home.”
In its report, commission staff say the point of the policy on agricultural dwellings is “to ensure that all development must be necessary for agricultural production” and recognize that “the entire ‘farm’ can consist of multiple legal parcels that together constitute one unified farming operation.”
Coastal staffers did, however, make an exception. If a rancher owns non-contiguous legal lots—and can prove that they are wholly independent operations—he or she could have up to 7,000 square feet on each.
Jack Liebster, a senior planner with the county who has helmed the update process at the C.D.A., told the Light on Tuesday that his team was still trying to read and process the entire staff report, which includes a 90-page staff report and over six hundred pages of attachments. He said the county’s legal team was reviewing the limits on contiguous lots.
Although the commission said the intent of the language is to preserve family farms, Mr. Liebster worries that it could do the opposite. “We don’t want to create an incentive to break up existing farms. That’s our concern.”
Agriculture permits
One significant change the commission staff made to the county’s I.P. was requiring a permit if a rancher or farmer wants to change the type of agriculture on a plot of land.
The county, in the implementation plan it submitted, did not make that differentiation. In effect, the county didn’t see a need for a permit when planting an acre of kale, strawberries or wine grapes on previously grazed land.
But commission staff said that kind of shift constitutes a “change in the intensity of use,” and therefore qualifies as development.
Additionally, any amount of grading for agricultural purposes requires a permit. The staffers deleted a threshold the county had proposed—the movement of over 150 cubic yards of dirt—because there is no such quantitative measure in the Coastal Act. (Staff noted that the county could ask for an exemption for a specific limit of grading through what’s called a Categorical Exclusion Order.)
David Lewis, the director of the University of California Cooperative Extension in Marin, opposes the change in language. In comments sent to staffers, he wrote, “The ability to transition from grazing livestock to another crop and back again is the flexibility required for farms and ranches to be viable…the definition as written would halt permanently any opportunities for additional production, including the entry of new or beginning farmers.” He told Light that he believes impacts to water, for instance, are already addressed in regulations with other entities like the state water board.
But Ms. Trainer wrote in a letter to the commission staff that viticulture and row cropping can spur impacts to water resources and scenic resources that “must be addressed and mitigated through a coastal development permit” and, potentially, the CEQA process. In a separate letter, she expressed concerns about how exactly the county would regulate viticulture. (At the commission hearing on the land use plan last spring, commissioners considered a proposal to make viticulture a conditional, rather than a principally permitted, use in Marin’s coastal zone because of fears over how vines could change the landscape. However, it failed, 5-7.)
The commission staff responded to concerns brought up by some commenters by stipulating that ongoing agricultural operations, “such as ongoing rotational grazing and crop farming,” do not fall under a permit requirement. Ongoing means a given type of agriculture has occurred on the land within the past 10 years.
Coastal hazards
The commission-approved land use plan implemented strict standards for development on blufftops and shorelines because of the unique hazards they face: erosion and sea-level rise.
Under the plan, new development in the coastal zone must be safe from those hazards for 100 years without the need for shoreline protection devices, such as seawalls.
A law firm representing homeowners in Seadrift objected to the 100-year timeframe, which it framed as a “straitjacket.” It argued that there was too much uncertainty in how much sea levels will rise in that time frame; it could be under a foot or over six feet, according to some estimates. The firm argued that planners might have to “consider the worst case scenarios over this very extended timeframe, no matter how unlikely.”
The homeowners proposed a 50-year timeframe for residential homes, but the staff report kept the century-long timeframe, which was approved in the L.U.P. last year.
The commission staff edits to the implementation plan clarified that all coastal development permit applications will be “screened” to determine what kind of hazards the project might face. Projects threatened by geologic issues like earthquakes or steep slopes will need to assemble an environmental hazard report; development on blufftops and shorelines will also have to prepare a “coastal hazard analysis,” which will require developments in those areas to be moved whenever they become unsafe.
And if home renovations result in a big enough change, the project would constitute “redevelopment” and be subject to the same standards as new development.
Commission staff specified in their edits to the implementation plan that redevelopment is triggered if 50 percent or more of the walls, 50 percent or more of the foundation or 50 percent or more of the floor and roof are replaced; or, per FEMA standards, if the cost of renovations exceeds 50 percent of the market value of the home.
Community character
One change proposed by the E.A.C., an absolute limit on the size of residential homes, was rebuffed by commission staff.
The E.A.C. wrote that a proposed development in Inverness Park of almost 9,000 square feet (it includes a home, a second unit and an art studio) has “raised alarm bells” in a place that “struggles with affordable housing.” To halt a future of modest homes torn down by wealthy buyers to erect sizeable domiciles and protect community character, Ms. Trainer proposed a 3,500-square-foot cap on residences in the coastal zone—excepting the agricultural zone—and a 4,500-square-foot cap when the garage and accessory buildings are included.
Commission staff, however, said that such a change needed to originate with the county, not the commission, and be subject to public hearings. A single cap across the coastal zone, it added, doesn’t differentiate between varying community characters in different towns.