In recent weeks, business owners in Bolinas have taken to their group chat to vent and exchange updates. The mood of their messages has been bleak since early September, when county officials closed part of the beach due to surfacing wastewater. Tourism has slowed and foot traffic has plummeted, delivering a considerable blow to local mainstays like BoVida, the Bolinas Market and Smiley’s Saloon.
“These past two months have been the slowest of the year—usually our busiest, thanks to Indian summer,” said Tyrone Brendel, standing behind the counter in his empty BoVida café on a quiet Friday afternoon. “The drop-off has been substantial, and the hardest part is that this stretch usually carries me through the winter.”
Mr. Brendel has already laid off two employees, requested rent assistance from his landlord and is considering a winter shutdown to reduce expenses.
The beach closure, now in its second month, has yielded more questions than answers. Recent tests by the Regional Water Quality Control Board revealed no human waste in samples taken from the faster-flowing seepages, which had initially raised concerns about aging septic systems on the Big Mesa.
But the findings did indicate troubling levels of pathogens, biological oxygen demand and nitrogen—findings that leave the county uncertain. E. coli was also detected, indicating mammalian gut bacteria, said Dr. Lisa Santora, the county’s public health officer, at a virtual town hall last week.
Further testing will focus on sediment patches with white crystallization, said Sarah Jones, director of the Community Development Agency. But the lack of clarity isn’t what local business owners were hoping for.
“The business has been really slow,” said Samira Nassrah, who has operated the Bolinas Market for the past 45 years. “Locals alone can’t sustain us, and the mixed messaging—half the beach is open, half is closed—has just created confusion. I wish the government could step in like they did during Covid.”
Ms. Nassrah’s nephew, Abey Nasra, echoed her concerns. “It’s hurting everyone,” he said. “Every year we struggle as winter approaches, but this time, with the beach closed, it hurts a bit too much,” he said. On a typical Saturday, the market sells 70 to 80 sandwiches; now, they’re lucky to sell a dozen. “That kills us. We need to move product, not have it sit on the shelf.”
Some view the beach closure as excessive. “This is much ado about nothing,” said Emery Calo Vest, owner of La Sirena Bo-tique, a Wharf Road gift shop.
Longtime residents, including Mr. Brendel, recall similar wastewater seepages in the past. “I grew up here, and the water is no different than it ever has been,” he said. “The runoff they showed in photos? That’s always been there.”
Ms. Jones acknowledged that concerns about bacterial contamination on the mesa are decades old. “There have been attempts to take action, but for one reason or another, whether it was the county, BCPUD, the water boards or some combination, efforts to address the issue haven’t materialized,” she said.
Bolinas’s wastewater woes trace back to at least the 1970s, when raw sewage from 187 downtown toilets flowed into the lagoon, prompting a lawsuit from the water quality control board that pushed for a massive $8.1 million treatment plant. An Environmental Protection Agency report from the same era also condemned the mesa’s septic systems, but fears of overdevelopment killed the treatment plant proposal.
The mesa, a patchwork of 20-by-100-foot lots sold in the 1920s by The San Francisco Bulletin, was laid out without consideration for drainage or erosion. As development surged in the 1970s, so did the problems. “We’ve seen this before,” said Paul Kayfetz, a one-time director of BCPUD, recalling a similar beach closure back in the ’70s.
Efforts in the 1980s were equally fraught. A 1987 study by Questa Engineering declared a public health hazard, with effluent surfacing on properties and leaching through cliffs. The proposed solution—a multimillion-dollar community system with leach fields on empty lots—faced swift backlash. Over 350 residents signed a petition against it, vowing to unseat any board member in favor. Even a state-imposed moratorium on new systems couldn’t last; it was lifted by 1990.
The 1990s brought the Todd Plan, a drainage scheme designed to channel surface water off the mesa. It met familiar skepticism. “Everyone I know is against it,” Jody Angel, an editor of the Hearsay News, said at the time. “People in Bolinas like their funky roads.” By 1998, the plan had become the stickiest issue in BCPUD board elections, and the debate lingered into the next decade. Finally, in 2004, a series of culverts were built, a modest attempt at managing a decades-old problem.
Bolinas hydrogeologist Rob Gailey views the mesa’s geology as central to its challenges. The semipervious Monterey shale and other conditions beneath the topsoil can hinder filtration, creating shallow groundwater that flows along the surface of the low-permeability layer.
“Water follows the path of least resistance,” he explained. “Ground water generally flows from points of higher elevation to lower ones, flowing through areas that offer less resistance—creating preferential flow pathways, such as sandier sediments and rock fractures. If a pathway reaches the bluffs above the beach, then groundwater will discharge as seeps or springs. And if there’s contamination in the water, those flow pathways could become routes for contaminant migration.”
Whatever the origin of the contamination—human or otherwise—the problem persists. “There’s still bacterial contamination on the beach,” Ms. Jones said. “We want to get it reopened, but we also need longer-term solutions that prevent drainage from reaching the beach. That’s now on our radar.”