Sewage problems at seven ranches in the Point Reyes National Seashore ranged from leaking septic tanks to raw sewage pooling in a field, communications between Marin County staff and park officials show. Emails from the past year, which the Light acquired through a public records request, shed light on recent septic inspections that have become a focal point in debates over the environmental impacts caused by the park’s historic beef ranches and dairies.
Subpar septic systems exist on private property throughout West Marin, but ranchers leasing public land are under increased scrutiny as the park navigates regulatory obstacles and a lawsuit over its plan to offer 20-year leases to multi-generational dairy and beef producers.
Tips from anti-ranching activists led inspectors from Marin County Environmental Health Services to find sewage draining into an open field at B Ranch and into a cattle manure pond at L Ranch in February. County staff subsequently visited every occupied ranch in the park during the spring and summer, identifying E, G, J, Niman and Zanardi Ranches as the most urgently in need of system repair or replacement.
The county’s enforcement is patchy on federal lands. On Aug. 23, environmental health specialist Becky Gondola sent a notice of violation to rancher Bill Niman for a failed leach field with pooling sewage on his Bolinas lease. Yet when the county heard an alarming report that wastewater was flowing into an open manure pond at G Ranch, it decided against inspecting the grazing operation or issuing a notice because the leaseholder, Kevin Lunny, had alerted the park himself and was cooperating on a solution.
“In a situation where [the National Park Service] didn’t own the property, we would issue notices for all of them,” Ms. Gondola said. “Our jurisdiction is a little up in the air for this.”
Park spokeswoman Melanie Gunn declined to answer specific questions about the inspections, citing ongoing litigation. “The N.P.S. is continuing to coordinate with Marin County Environmental Health Services to ensure compliance with all of the inspection results,” she said.
The park’s strategy to meet the coastal commission’s water quality requirements relies partly on the new inspections of ranch septic systems, many of which are decades old and had never been examined before. The park reported that, since the first inspections at B and L Ranches, county officials had found seven ranches in need of major septic repairs. The ranchers’ leases specify that they, not the park, must maintain and repair their sewage disposal systems, and that they are responsible for meeting pollution control laws and regulations.
The county’s E.H.S. division has no records for about a third of septic systems in Marin. It does not monitor systems or inspect them unprompted unless a landowner has a less-common alternative system or is seeking permits for a major project. But the discoveries at B and L Ranches caught the attention of the coastal commission and led to the more comprehensive inspections, which will likely continue annually.
The commission’s latest staff report on the park noted that inspectors had found “widespread issues” and offered a sample list of corrective actions without identifying the names of any more ranches. Earlier this month, E.H.S. deputy director Greg Pirie told the Marin Independent Journal which seven ranches—including B and L—needed the most extensive repairs, but he did not provide details. The California Public Records Act request filed by the Light revealed the specific problems.
At almost every ranch, inspectors noted small maintenance issues, like a tank in need of pumping or a new lid. But a few had more dire problems.
At J Ranch, the park’s northernmost dairy, a house built in 1994 has a leaking septic tank that will need to be replaced or repaired. A repair would need a county permit, inspectors noted. Additionally, neither the inspectors nor dairyman Tim Kehoe could find the septic tank for one cabin during a May inspection. “They really should figure that out because tanks should be pumped every three to five years,” Ms. Gondola said.
At E Ranch, perched between Drakes Estero and the Pacific, the level of wastewater in an unpermitted fiberglass septic tank that serves the main residence was “extremely high,” county specialist Gwen Baert noted in June. When she ran water into it, sewage appeared in a nearby cow pasture. “It is clear that the present leach field is not accepting sewage from the tank properly,” she wrote in an email to park staff. The tank may need replacing.
At the Zanardi Ranch on Platform Bridge Road in the adjacent Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a small farmworker housing unit had an unpermitted, recently installed septic tank, Ms. Gondola found on July 7. The tank was “filled with excessive greasy deposits,” she wrote to park staff, and quickly backed up when water flowed in. The system needs to be replaced, she said.
During a June visit to the Niman Ranch in Bolinas, where Mr. Niman co-founded the pioneering organic meat company of the same name in 1969, Ms. Gondola found the sump pump serving the main house was broken and noticed the leach field was damp, with sedges growing lushly over it. When she returned in August and ran a new working pump for just two minutes, she saw wastewater surfacing in the field.
Mr. Niman was the only rancher to be issued a notice of violation by the county. In general, Ms. Gondola said, enforcement for the sewage problems would be left to the park. But she felt the leach field problem was urgent and that Mr. Niman didn’t seem to be receptive. He failed to immediately cap off the septic tank as advised, instead excavating the existing system without a permit, she said. “Niman was not entirely convinced that his system had failed,” Ms. Gondola said. “He says he’s fixed it but, because of the quality of the soil there, I don’t think that’s going to be possible.”
This week, Mr. Niman sent the Light a photo of his leach field, which appeared to be dry after he cleared a blockage in the effluent line and added a new set of valves. “We did everything ourselves and feel it is fixed,” he said.
At G Ranch, which straddles Sir Francis Drake Boulevard near the historic KPH Maritime Radio Station, untreated sewage from a residence is discharging directly into a manure pond through the same kind of crude system that inspectors found at L Ranch—a fact to which Mr. Lunny alerted the park after reading about the L Ranch problem. “Just so you know,” he said he told them, “that’s what ours does.”
Mr. Lunny told the Light that the system, though not up to current code, was fully permitted when his parents installed it in 1974. The park instructed him to install a new leach field, which is being designed by an engineer. With the repair in the works, county officials said they decided not to conduct an inspection of G Ranch.
Mr. Lunny lamented the fact that septic issues were being used by activists as evidence that ranchers are abusing the land. He said that such problems are commonplace, and county officials haven’t done comprehensive inspections outside the seashore. “This isn’t required throughout the county,” he said. “It’s a bit alarming to be reading about these as violations because it feeds into this whole public perception of ranchers and water quality issues.”
Jarrod Mendoza, who leases B Ranch, and his sister Jolynn McClelland, who runs L Ranch, had among the most dysfunctional septic systems, but they fixed them in March, installing three new septic tanks.
None of the other ranchers have yet applied for county permits to fix their septic issues. The park can enforce restrictions on land use and grazing, issue fines, and eventually terminate a lease if a rancher does not cooperate with the repairs it deems necessary, Ms. Gunn said.
The park service may have known about at least some of the septic problems for years. In April, Mr. Mendoza told the Light that officials had been aware of the B Ranch problem and planned a repair for many years before it was noticed by activists. At the time, he had hoped the park would fund the repair.