The Point Reyes National Seashore will be one step closer to removing 95 oyster racks in Drakes Estero with the expected approval by the California Coastal Commission next week of a plan to use mechanical excavators, divers and boat workers to excise the racks and remove debris from decades of oyster cultivation.
Rack removal is the next phase of what the park is calling the restoration of Drakes Estero, which started in January with the demolition of Drakes Bay Oyster Company’s cannery and other buildings after the farm evacuated.
A mechanical excavator will cut up the racks into pieces, which barges will bring to a temporary floating dock to transfer out of the estero for disposal.
The park said the project will damage roughly half an acre of eelgrass, but expects more than that to grow in the absence of the racks and debris; the commission staff recommended approving the project as long as the park also submits an “Eelgrass Monitoring and Mitigation Plan” to track projected eelgrass growth.
The estero will remain open to the public during the project.
“Our general goals,” seashore outreach coordinator Melanie Gunn said in an email, “are to remove the marine debris and equipment associated with the former commercial shellfish operation,” including five miles of wooden racks, anchoring devices, lines, plastic ground mats, abandoned shellfish bags and plastic tubes.
The executive director of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, Amy Trainer, said in an email to the Light that she supported the staff’s recommendation, writing that the seashore “seems to have gone out of its way to ensure that the least damaging restoration alternatives and methods were chosen.” But Corey Goodman, a longtime critic of the park’s management of Drakes Estero, wrote a critical letter to commission staff, wondering why a more lengthy environmental assessment was not being carried out.
Agencies like the commission are typically exempt from preparing environmental impact reports, but in a letter to a commission staffer and commission chair Steve Kinsey, Mr. Goodman argued that an environmental assessment or report should be required, in light of a ruling last summer by a Marin Superior Court judge. In a court case over cease-and-desist and restoration orders issued to the oyster company by the commission, the court said the state agency should have prepared an E.I.R. before issuing the restoration orders because of the estero’s unique environment.
Mr. Goodman said the commission needs to prepare an E.I.R. before issuing its concurrence on the federal government’s plan.
As for the idea of restoration itself, Mr. Goodman pushed back against the entire concept, writing that the seashore “is not proposing to restore the historic oyster racks, top predators, or native shellfish that were abundant in Drakes Estero,” but is creating a “new environment” free of racks and cultivated oysters. (Dredging in coastal waters is only allowed in strict circumstances, such as restoration; the staff report says in this case, the work is allowed because it supports the park’s restoration project.)
Removing the racks requires taking out about 477 tons of wood. The park also plans to dredge 1.5 acres below the racks to remove debris, such as cultivated oyster shell and aquaculture equipment that has accumulated below, which the park says has hampered eelgrass growth in some areas. (A 2009 National Academy of Sciences report said the oyster farm had localized impacts on eelgrass, with about 1 percent of eelgrass lost and 7 percent damaged by cultivation and the passage of motor boats.)
The commission staff report said that both park and commission staff considered using only divers to remove oyster shell and debris from the water bottoms by hand; however, they decided that some pieces would be too heavy to get out, and that the amount of debris, coupled with the fact that some things are submerged in the water bottom, would take an inordinate amount of time to remove.
The park says it assessed the potential impact of removing the racks by looking at eelgrass maps, aerial footage from a flight during low tide, underwater video footage and information from Drakes Bay Oyster Company in the last years of its operations.
The commission typically requires more eelgrass to be grown than is lost to approve projects—at least 1.2 times what is lost or damaged. The park estimates that the process of removing debris and racks, from which oyster bags and tubes hung for decades to cultivate the bivalve, will result in damage to, or loss of, 0.59 acres of eelgrass.
The park argues, however, that the removal would spur an additional 2.8 acres of new growth. As a condition of approval, commission staff are recommending the park submit a plan that requires monitoring of eelgrass growth and “contingency measures” if expected growth does not measure up.
There are seven acres of water bottom below the 95 racks, but the seashore is limiting operations to the areas with the most debris, dredging “only the top several inches needed to capture material present on the surface of the seabed,” according to the commission’s staff report.
Dredging the entirety of the seven-acre area would capture more shell and aquaculture debris, but the report said that “some of these areas—primarily those with low concentrations of debris below collapsed racks or racks that were used infrequently—support eelgrass that would be removed by the use of dredging.”