Marin County’s most popular tourist destination, Muir Woods National Monument, moved a step closer to a parking and traffic-control makeover this week after county supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved a draft Memorandum of Understanding with the National Park Service. 

The memorandum outlines a plan to eliminate nearly all parking along Muir Woods Road over the next seven years and establish best practices for the reduction of stormwater runoff pollution caused by cars parked adjacent to Redwood Creek—all while maintaining current visitation levels.

The agreement, which is pending approval by the park service, also brought the threat of a lawsuit by the Mount Tam Task Force, the same group that sued the Interior Department and employees of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (which manages the monument) last summer and halted plans to build a bus stop and trail in Muir Beach. 

On Tuesday, the task force handed supervisors a notice of intent to sue that alleges the county is violating the Endangered Species Act by not providing tougher safeguards for Redwood Creek’s endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead trout. The group said it will file a lawsuit in 60 days if the county does not make revisions to the agreement.

“The M.O.U. is a good step forward on a traffic-management program,” said Chris Carr, an attorney with San Francisco-based Morrison and Foerster, LLP, which is representing the task force. “But more needs to be done to address the threat to the coho and steelhead in Redwood Creek.”

At the heart of the matter is whether Muir Woods should be treated as a tourist hub or an ecological preserve, where rare redwoods tower and sensitive fish populations spawn. “In effect, are we loving Muir Woods to death?” asked Supervisor Damon Connolly. “It’s important to provide access [for visitors], but it’s also important to protect endangered species.”

The memorandum

The M.O.U. allows the park to create a new parking reservation system—similar to the system used for Alcatraz Island—that officials hope will stem the influx of cars to Muir Woods and cap visitation numbers on a daily basis. By park estimates, the monument hosts anywhere from 5,000 to 6,500 visitors during peak summer days and 1 million visitors annually. Cars parked along the mile-and-a-half stretch of Muir Woods Road can reach 400 when they cram together along the road’s shoulder at peak times, and as many as 1,000 total park there daily, according to the recreation area.

Under the memorandum, the park would initiate the reservation system within two years, and the county would gradually phase out parking on the narrow, deteriorating Muir Woods Road within five years of the system’s establishment. Parking on the road would be limited to only 80 spots by June 1, 2016. Over the following five years, parking will slashed to just 30 spaces along a small portion of road upstream from a bridge spanning the creek. 

Critics of the memorandum argue that the plan’s timeline does not move swiftly enough to prevent injury to salmon and trout populations—nor does it improve public safety, as more and more large buses would transport visitors along the narrow, two-lane Muir Woods Road. 

By increasing the number of buses, the park hopes to maintain its current visitation levels while simultaneously reducing the number of vehicles on the road.

Under the M.O.U., the Marin County Sheriff’s Office will provide parking enforcement until the park assumes that responsibility on Jan. 1, 2016; the park has pledged to hire one additional fulltime staff member to do so.

Critics have also lambasted the county and park for not conducting an environmental review of the longterm effects of parking and heavy traffic on Muir Woods Road. The county claimed a “categorical exemption” from such a review under the California Environmental Quality Act due to the minor nature of renovations to the road to restrict parking, such as the installation of signs, bollards and fencing and the re-paving of crumbled road shoulders.

“There is negligible or no expansion of use,” the county staff report on the memorandum states. “The project will not result in any potentially significant impacts.”

The sheer number of vehicles parked on the road has for many years increased stormwater pollution in Redwood Creek, the task force argues. Gravel dislodges from the road shoulder and washes into Redwood Creek—whose course flows parallel to the road. Numerous culverts also drain from the road and discharge directly into the creek, where excess sediment built up on the streambed can smother salmon and trout eggs.

Legally, Mr. Carr argued, the county’s negligence constitutes a “take” under the Endangered Species Act, which prohibits any action that harms endangered or threatened species by disrupting their habitats and behavioral patterns. 

Mr. Carr urged supervisors on Tuesday to strengthen the language of a document appended to the M.O.U.—called Stormwater Management Best Management Practices—to require the county and park to actively prevent cars from exacerbating sediment pollution. (He noted that the county could choose to implement these best practices independently of the memorandum and the national park.)

Mr. Carr also expressed concern that the agreement did not contain enough enforcement power to phase out parking in the stated timeline. He suggested a provision stating that “the county will commence enforcement of parking restrictions by August 15” of this year.

Several community members have asked the county to eliminate parking within three years instead of seven. But officials have responded that the county’s Department of Public Works needs that time to properly install signs and fix crumbling portions of the road; without that work completed, they say, people would continue to park along the roadside anyway. The department’s assistant director, Eric Steger, pointed to the December closure of Muir Woods Road after large storms washed away portions of roadside. Despite the closure, cars continued to park on the road.

“We saw that there was a significant lack of compliance for parking regulations,” he said. “Partly from not providing enough public notice and partly from not having a reservation system in place so that you could control that arrival as well.”

Mr. Steger said the county and park—with support from the California Department of Parks and Recreation—have formed a working group to identify how best to reach parking enforcement goals. 

Discussions on the draft agreement began last fall, when Congressman Jared Huffman convened an ad hoc work group—including members of the Mount Tam Task Force—to provide input on the M.O.U. That followed a lawsuit filed by the Mount Tam Task Force over the summer, which halted the national park’s plans to build a bus station and trail in nearby Muir Beach. At the time, community members expressed frustration that the recreation area had claimed a categorical exemption from environmental review.

“No private developer would ever be allowed to break ground without respecting the rules,” said Kristin Shannon, co-chair of the task force, in an email last August. “We see no reason that GGNRA should be granted sweeping exceptions to regulations, laws, and common courtesies.”

Another major concern for critics of the memorandum is the effect an increase in bus traffic will have on Muir Woods Road and Tam Junction, where Highway 1 meets Highway 101; that junction marks the entry point for visitors traveling to Muir Woods and other West Marin destinations. In December, the county passed an ordinance that banned vehicles longer than 36 feet on Muir Woods Road. Many, however, feel that length should be reduced to 24 feet. “If [the buses are] going to be that frequent,” said Clayton Smith, a Tam Valley resident, on Tuesday, “then they ought to be a hell of a lot smaller.”

The M.O.U. itself calls for increased commercial and public bus transportation, and several residents have worried that more buses on the road will pose pedestrian hazards and back up traffic. And with access to Muir Woods clogged at Tam Junction, travelers to other areas of West Marin may be affected as well.

“With a bottleneck on Highway 1 because of Muir Woods mismanagement, this changes access to West Marin,” Ms. Shannon wrote in an email to the Light. “This makes public safety risks go up and the economy go down, as people cannot get through Tam Junction to get to Stinson Beach or north.”

Finally, locals have criticized the county for not taking a cut of the tens of millions of dollars the park enjoys from visitors to Muir Woods. The memorandum does not stipulate whether the county may levy a parking tax for use of Muir Woods Road, which the county owns and maintains.

“The [M.O.U.] mostly ignores environmental goals and focuses on traffic and additional income to [the National Park Service] via the reservation system and parking fees from the county road,” Ms. Shannon wrote. “One million visitors a year is about money, not protecting Muir Woods.”

The agreement requires the county and park to hold at least one public hearing a year to give to receive public input on the M.O.U.’s implementation.