After hours of public testimony last week that underscored fears over what farmers characterized as burdensome regulations on producing food, Marin County pulled part of its proposed Local Coastal Program update from the California Coastal Commission’s consideration last week.
Brian Crawford, the director of the Community Development Agency, said that county and commission staffs will attempt to resolve lingering issues as much as possible before a vote, as well as make sure they fully understand the commission staff’s changes, which were released in final form just two weeks before Thursday’s hearing.
More agreement, he added, would help win over the Board of Supervisors, which must eventually approve the commission’s edits to finalize an update. Two of the biggest remaining issues revolve around agriculture, which comprises much of Marin’s coastal zone, and rules for development in hazardous areas like shorelines and blufftops.
And while last week’s debate centered around the implementation plan—the portion of the L.C.P. that spells out development code language—some of the big issues actually come from the land use plan, which was already approved by the commission last May and outlines broad policies.
Going forward, the county and commission staffs plan to work on both the L.U.P and the I.P., then resubmit the entire L.C.P. and hopefully vote on it in November, senior planner Jack Liebster told the Light. (To make that work procedurally, in the interim the Board of Supervisors will likely need to reject the L.U.P approved last May, though Mr. Liebster said it would be a “very friendly rejection.”)
The agricultural community rallied to last week’s hearing, where over a dozen farmers and advocates said some provisions in the I.P., like needing permits to plant row crops or grapes on grazing lands, should be eliminated.
The I.P., as modified by commission staff, says that ongoing activities, including rotational cropping and grazing, do not need permits, and defines “ongoing” as activities happening within the past 10 years. But, the plan said, changes in use or intensity of use of agricultural lands need a permit to assess potential impacts.
Many West Marin farmers argued that they never would have started their operations had those rules been in place, because they pose too great a burden. Others added that the land is already heavily regulated and that a change in use doesn’t automatically mean negative impacts, while others worried about a lengthy timeframe for acquiring a permit when trying to quickly adapt to changing markets.
Arron Wilder, who started growing row crops like kale, cabbage, broccoli and strawberries in Point Reyes Station half a decade ago, said permits for changing the type of agriculture on land would have cost too much for him. “I probably wouldn’t have started,” he said.
Peter Martinelli, a longtime row cropper who farms 23 acres in Bolinas, echoed that frustration. “I would not be in business if I didn’t start scratching around on a quarter-acre of pasture,” he said. If he had needed a permit, he added, “I wouldn’t have gone into business.”
But others disputed allowing blanket changes in agricultural use without a permit. Amy Trainer, the head of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, praised the commission staff’s work on the plan. She emphasized her support for local agriculture and “flexibility” in the I.P., but said there can be impacts from row cropping and viticulture, especially given sensitive resources, wildlife and Tomales Bay, which is a state-designated impaired water body. She supported streamlining efforts, as through de minimis waivers, rather than giving complete exemptions.
Near the end of the hearing, one of the commissioners, Mary Shallenberger, said that while onions or tomatoes might not fundamentally change the landscape, a vineyard “destroys the soil.”
“The point is that all agriculture isn’t equal,” she said, adding that permitting those kinds of changes should be “carefully nuanced.”
The plan’s regulations on farmhouses and intergenerational homes have also raised confusion and concerns.
Since the county started the L.C.P. update process in 2008, agriculturalists have lobbied for more homes to be allowed on ranches, so multiple generations could live there simultaneously. The proposed program allows one farmhouse and up to two generational homes (depending on acreage) per farm, which is defined as all legal lots under common ownership. In response to concerns aired in the past few months, the commission staff said non-contiguous legal lots owned by the same person could be considered separate farms, but some have said the language still incentivizes selling off lots.
At the meeting, Jamison Watts, the executive director of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, worried that the new rules would reduce the value of farmer’s development rights. Landowners, he said, come to MALT when they need an influx of cash such as to pay big inheritance taxes. But if the development value goes down, so does the price of the easement, and ranchers might decide not to sell if it’s no longer worth it.
He worried that the plan would “effectively marginalize MALT’s role in the coastal zone,” where the nonprofit has bought conservation easements on about 15,000 acres, or roughly half of the zone’s agricultural land.
Kevin Kahn, a senior planner for the commission, said that limiting housing on agricultural lands is meant to maximize land in production. He believed it was unlikely that farmers would “sell land and put their livelihood at risk” because of the policy. An addendum to the staff report released right before the meeting argued that the policy encourages lands to remain intact because ranchers can only build an intergenerational home on legal lots that are 120 acres and a second intergenerational home on 180-acre lots; therefore, those with smaller multiple lots would have to merge to get better allowances.
The commission staff also clarified the limitation in the addendum, in response to some confusion. The plan requires a deed restriction to enforce the house limit, but that restriction would only apply to the legal lot where the homes are built, not to the entire farm, so that the owner could still sell off other lots with development rights intact.
But Mr. Crawford was still concerned about how the policy would play out when some owners or operators have partial ownership in multiple farms. “Bottom line—we need to revisit it,” he said.
As for permits for changing the type of agriculture, Mr. Kahn emphasized that it didn’t pertain to “ongoing” activities, and that the definition of ongoing has flexibility built in, if the owner makes a good case that operations from more than a decade ago should be reinstated. He also said there are ways to “expedite” the permit process, such as with waivers and categorical exclusion orders, which exempt some types of development, like barns.
Dan Carl, the deputy director of the commission, said that despite all the provisions they had made to streamline permitting, his staff was open to revisiting the exclusion orders.
“Although the vast majority of public comments focused on agriculture, the county and the commission are also still hammering out policies around development in hazardous areas like blufftops and shorelines, which are subject to erosion and sea-level rise.
Mr. Crawford said many of the concerns about regulations for these areas arise from the land use plan, which the I.P. must adhere to.
The land use plan says that new development must not rely on shoreline protection devices, like seawalls, but adds that “redevelopment”—remodeling so significant that that it should be considered new—must not rely on those devices to prove their stability.
In a letter sent to the commission staff, the county said the changes in the I.P., which were made to adhere to the L.U.P. as changed by the commission, “highlight the problems with these L.U.P. policies.” The biggest concerns revolve around what it called the confusing definition of redevelopment and what it said were conflicts between different sections of the I.P.