Tomales Bay Oyster Company, the century-old oyster farm in southern Marshall, has embarked on an effort to legalize its booming retail operation. An application under review by Marin County, spurred by a code enforcement notice in 2012 and updated over the past two years, proposes a new parking area, well and septic system for a recently purchased parcel across the highway.
The application would legalize the sale of oysters—sourced mostly from the bay, but also from other farms and the Pacific Northwest, to meet a skyrocketing demand—seven days a week, an expansion of the currently permitted three days a week.
And that’s not all. Owner Tod Friend hopes to keep over 80 picnic tables and the retaining walls built around them, where on busy weekends hundreds of day-trippers come with packed coolers and pay for their use. He is also asking to legalize an expanded number of employees working onsite and the presence of a family that lives in a residence on the property.
Both the farm and the newly purchased land are zoned for agriculture, raising questions for the local planning group about whether the bustling retail operation, which brings as many as 150 cars to park along the shoulder of the coastal highway, should be a permitted use.
According Scott Hoffstrasser, a consultant working on Mr. Friend’s application, the business provides “a recreational use that is consistent with the Coastal Act. The question is, ‘How is it managed to preserve and protect the Coastal Zone and the rural community, and also provide for a successful community business?’ It’s quite a puzzle,” he said.
Mr. Friend, who was bagging and selling oysters with his crew during a humming Memorial Day weekend, told the Light that the biggest complaint has been about highway parking. “When you come out of the city and come to the country, it’s just wonderful, Shangri-la, with breeze blowing, greenery all around you,” he said. “You don’t notice that there are cars going by at 55 miles an hour.”
The oyster farm dates back to the early 1900s, and a number of sheds and two residences were built in the first half of the century to support operations. The sheds are used for cleaning, storing and selling the bivalves; one of the residences now serves as an office, while the other is still a home.
In 1987, when the farm was primarily a wholesale business, then-owners Oscar and Edward Johansson updated the use permit to improve holding tanks, legalize an expanded deck and build an oyster-packing shed. The terms of the updated permit, which has not been altered since, limits retail sales to weekends; the number of employees working onsite to eight; and the use of an onsite residence to a single person. It never mentions picnic tables or barbecues.
These days, droves of customers purchase oysters for their personal consumption, prying them open while cooking hot dogs on the grills, eating juicy slices of watermelon and imbibing wine and soda as festive music plays over the speakers.
Parking problem
The business has a 65-space parking lot inside its gate, but the 85 picnic tables it provides—rented out for $5 a person or $75 a table, according to its website—means that well over 600 people could picnic or eat oysters onsite at any given time. Roughly 500 people a day often patronize the business on busy summer weekends, and after the parking lot fills up, the cars start lining the highway shoulders.
“I would say probably in 2010 or so, there was great awareness of increased parking along the road and increased business,” said Lori Kyle, the board president of the East Shore Planning Group, Marshall’s de facto town council.
The group has aired its concerns over traffic in multiple letters to the county; the most recent missive was sent this week. “Our main concern is safety as manifest by the parking and the patrons…who walk along Highway 1, with strollers and coolers,” Ms. Kyle said. “That’s a highway, and people go at highway speeds. It’s not safe.”
A traffic and parking study commissioned by the farm to assess the impacts from T.B.O.C. found a maximum of 153 cars—averaging two and a half passengers in each vehicle—parked along the highway on one weekend afternoon in October 2013. This past Sunday afternoon, about 130 lined the shoulder, according to a rough Light count.
The planning group’s most recent letter also points out that the Marshall Community Plan stipulates that new development should not have a “cumulative adverse effect” on traffic, and that conflicts “shall be remedied wherever feasible to ensure the peaceful, rural pace of life in the East Shore area.” In past letters, the group has called for an “enforceable parking plan” to address safety concerns.
Mr. Friend said that in recent years he has stopped people from parking diagonally along the highway, hired valets and signed an agreement with West Marin School to let people park at that lot and take a shuttle to the farm. Still, many customers continue to amble down the highway.
Compounding the problem, Mr. Friend lost 17 onsite parking spaces last year when he learned that the spots were on National Park Service property. Mr. Friend, who had cleared vegetation and moved a significant amount of dirt on park property, requested the continued use of the land, but the request was denied as incompatible with park policy. (There is an ongoing investigation into the extent of the damage, according to Point Reyes National Seashore spokesman John Dell’Osso. Mr. Hoffstrasser said most or all of the recent work had been conducted in Caltrans’ right-of-way along the highway.)
The farm’s traffic study says that no pedestrians were hit from 2007 to 2011, based on the state’s most recent traffic records. But one accident appears to have resulted from a car leaving the farm’s entrance, and two others from botched parking maneuvers on the highway. Mr. Friend will have to commission another traffic study because of the proposed parking area.
The study says the accident rate for the stretch of highway is lower than average, a finding Mr. Friend is quick to underscore. “We want to be good neighbors…I’m not dismissing [the concern], but it’s not borne out in terms of any accident. No pedestrian has been hit,” he said.
The planning group has also pointed to nearby Hog Island Oyster Company’s permit, which limits the business to 10 picnic tables and 50 picnickers at a time. The planning group notes that Hog Island’s permit provides “an example of the specificity and detail” that the county can include in a new permit.
Mr. Friend argues that his new 26-acre parcel will significantly mitigate the parking problem, as it could accommodate most of the cars that now park on the shoulder.
That is crucial for the business, which received a notice from Caltrans last year that private businesses are not allowed to rely on the state agency’s right of way—that is, the shoulder. Mr. Hoffstrasser told the Light that the letter was “perplexing,” given that numerous other local businesses do just that.
Zoning limits
The new parcel is zoned for agricultural production under the county’s most restrictive zoning category, meant to protect land for agricultural production. Mr. Friend argues that the county allows for the development of small portions of agricultural land for uses that support agricultural operations, such as parking and water. For him, the extra parking, the water and the leach fields are necessary for his oyster operation.
“We’re suggesting that our agricultural effort is actually out in the water,” he said, “but that this land is providing parking for our customers who are purchasing our product that we’re producing right there.”
(The parcel, located just a mile south of the site of a former Coast Miwok village, also includes a relatively undisturbed Coast Miwok midden. It’s about an acre large, and filled with fragments of native oyster shells. The plans for the parcel avoid the prehistoric site.)
Amy Trainer, the executive director of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, is doubtful that the parking and septic uses on the agricultural parcel will be allowed. “We’re still reviewing the file,” she wrote in an email on Tuesday, “but it’s our understanding that the new 26-acre parcel is zoned for agricultural production, and its proposed use as a parking lot and septic field to service the retail and commercial oyster business across the road is not allowed under our Certified [Local Coastal Program].”
Then there are concerns about the extent of retail itself and the provenance of the oysters Mr. Friend sells.
There is a high demand for eating oysters and picnicking by the bay. It’s a demand that T.B.O.C. cannot meet it with its two water bottom leases—156 acres abutting its retail spot and another 62 near Walker Creek. In 2013, for instance, roughly 800,000 of the 2.3 million oysters the company sold came from either Drakes Bay Oyster Company, which shuttered at the end of last year, or from Washington State, according to documents filed with the state’s Fish and Game Commission.
Hog Island sells oysters grown outside Marin, too, but while its location further north in Marshall is zoned for commercial use, T.B.O.C. sits in an agricultural and residential planning district. The planning group noted that retail sales at T.B.O.C. are not new. Still, the community plan aims to limit new development to commercial zones, yet another point that the group wants to see addressed.
A big part of the need for outside oysters, Mr. Friend said, are tough conditions he must tackle in the bay. Oyster farms in Tomales Bay are prohibited from harvesting after big rainfalls. At other times, the appearance of a biotoxin caused by algae that can cause paralytic shellfish poisoning halts harvests. In 2014, Mr. Friend said the bay was closed for harvest 111 days.
In its recently revised project description, T.B.O.C. notes that retail use is allowed in the agricultural zone “when primary use of the property is for agriculture.” The description also stressed that the business “provides an important coastal recreational visitor service use” and cites the Coastal Act’s provisions, one of which is to “maximize public recreational opportunities in the coastal zone.”
The issues of oyster origin and picnic table fees have been raised both by the planning group and Inverness environmentalist Gordon Bennett. In its most recent letter, the planning group questioned how a business that earns substantial revenue from picnic tables and imported oysters could operate on agricultural land.
“[H]ow can substantial retail sales of out-of-area products purchased at wholesale be justified on [agriculturally] zoned property?” wrote Ms. Kyle on behalf of the board. Although the letter acknowledges the bay closures and the potential need to allow outside oysters at those times, it also wonders if those special circumstances should allow the retail sale of imported shellfish at other times.
Mr. Hoffstrasser believes the county’s development code in the coastal zone could allow for the sale of outside oysters in the updated permit, though he added that further conversations with the county are needed.
For Mr. Friend, a ban on outside oysters is not acceptable. “The last thing we need is local administrative rules and regulations that prohibit us from doing what we need to do to survive,” he said, adding that the Bay Area in general has shipped in oysters from Washington since the middle of the 19th century.
Ms. Kyle told the Light that the group supports Mr. Friend and the business. “We wish Tod every success, we really do. He’s a member of [the planning group], and he’s well liked and respected. We want him to have a successful operation. We just want clarification and resolution of some issues.”
Septic plans
Tomales Bay Oyster Company’s transformation into a retail business also means that it must address both the absence of an onsite water source and the presence of a septic system never intended to serve more than a handful of people.
Mr. Friend said that when he took over the business, in 2009, he stopped using a well on the bayside parcel because it was producing little water that was of poor quality. Since then, he has trucked in water—a dependency the county does not endorse for the business. “A hauled water system is not considered a perennial, sustainable water source,” the county’s Environmental Health Services wrote in 2014.
That water serves a septic system on the parcel that was built long ago. There is no permit on file for it with the county, and Mr. Friend acknowledges that he needs a new system for his many customers. “The leach field, as it is, is inadequate. There’s no question about that,” he said.
Mr. Friend is chivalrous when it comes to the lavatories at his business; women are invited to use two toilets served by the septic system, while men are relegated to the portable toilets. The latter are serviced twice weekly. The business also provides a hand-washing station beside them.
The county would not allow the oyster farm’s expansion to move forward without a new septic system, so Mr. Friend has submitted plans to install two leach fields on his new property across the highway. Because of its proximity to Tomales Bay—within 600 feet—the project will have to comply with stringent new state requirements for septic systems that require wastewater to be pretreated and filtered.
Last weekend, as Mr. Friend worked the retail counter, a woman came up to tell him that one of the women’s toilet had clogged. “I just wanted to let you know that one of the toilets needs to get plunged. It’s kind of overflowing,” she said.
Mr. Friend sighed. “I guess that’s my job,” he said.