After spending eight years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on an environmental review of a county vegetation and biodiversity plan meant to guide the management of Marin’s open space preserves, supervisors voted last week not to certify the review and instead accept the plan only as a “background” document.
That means the county can use information gleaned during the process, such as inventories of flora, but the plan will not streamline environmental review or save money for future projects.
The decision comes a month after a hearing during which many citizens protested the plan—which would have directed decision-making processes for 16,000 acres of open space, particularly in dealing with invasive species and fire fuels—because it did not evaluate an option banning herbicides.
Max Korten, director of the county parks department, said the process became sidetracked by a debate over a no-herbicide alternative. But the department and county counsel had said that evaluating such an alternative was inappropriate for programmatic environmental impact reports, which are not supposed to evaluate specific tools but, rather, overarching priorities.
“There have been so many comments and responses to comments that have taken the focus away from the intent of what this plan is,” Mr. Korten said.
Yet many tried to sway supervisors to either approve the E.I.R. or revise it. Nona Dennis, with the Marin Conservation League, said a refusal to certify the environmental review amounted to a huge waste of money, and she pleaded with supervisors to not “throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
Inverness resident Carolyn Longstreth, representing the California Native Plant Society, agreed, saying the decision was a “shocking” waste of taxpayer funds and failed to take advantage of the efficiencies that the plan promised.
But others urged an updated E.I.R. evaluating a no-herbicide alternative or at least a provision to move toward eliminating herbicides, particularly given supervisors’ stated goal to eventually stop using them. “We appreciate your mindset—it really seems that you truly want to get to zero use of pesticides,” said Sharon Rushton, with Sustainable Tam Almonte. “With that, we just want to emphasize that the way the plan is written currently does not achieve that. If you adopt it or accept it, you’re not accepting what you verbally have stated as what you want to achieve. Because in the plan it clearly states an indefinite use of pesticides.”
But revising the E.I.R. would cost over $200,000, according to the parks department, money Supervisor Steve Kinsey said he wasn’t keen on spending. Without the E.I.R., the Open Space District loses a tool to streamline decision-making and potentially exempt some future projects from extensive environmental scrutiny. Now, the district will continue to evaluate projects on a case-by-case basis.
Despite the lost streamlining, supervisors noted that programmatic E.I.R.s are not without their own problems. Supervisor Katie Rice noted that the county is being sued over an alleged failure to abide by the California Environmental Quality Act for trail work in the Gary Giacomini Preserve, despite its road and trail management plan’s programmatic E.I.R.
Supervisor Kinsey said that “in most things in life and especially in government, absolutes often create more problems than they solve. So I think that specific review at the time [projects are] being considered is the right way to handle it at this point.”