A Marin County judge last Friday awarded $652,544 in legal fees to attorneys representing the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network, for litigation dating back to 2007 that forced the county to reevaluate how it regulates future development in the San Geronimo Valley.
Superior Court Judge Paul Haakenson set the amount at about two thirds of the $913,531 that attorneys Michael Graf and Deborah Sivas requested, eliminating what he deemed “duplicative” charges and drastically reducing the amount owed to three students who worked on the case through the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic, which Ms. Sivas oversees. Those students, he ruled, should be compensated at a rate of $25-per-hour, rather than the $125-per-hour that Ms. Sivas requested.
In his ruling, Judge Haakenson found that the successful litigation brought by SPAWN’s attorneys had “vindicated an important public right and conferred a significant public benefit” for checking the county’s authority over development approvals.
His ruling was based on a state appellate court decision last year to set aside the portion of a 2007 Countywide Plan that deals with development in the valley, until a new supplemental environmental impact report could be drafted. The supplemental report will analyze future cumulative impacts of development on coho salmon and steelhead trout and outline mitigation measures to reduce impacts—two steps required under the California Environmental Quality Act.
Outside the courtroom on Friday, SPAWN’s executive director, Todd Steiner, accused the county of wasting taxpayer money in its failed attempts to fight SPAWN.
“They still don’t understand that they got the law wrong,” Mr. Steiner said. “And that’s troublesome that they think that, going forward. Unfortunately, we could end up here again.”
For her part, Ms. Sivas praised the court’s decision, but speculated that Judge Haakenson had underestimated the value of the work that her law clinic students performed.
“It is a major step,” said Ms. Sivas, who was accompanied at the hearing on Friday by a half-dozen Stanford students. “But it’s unfortunate that he thinks they’re not worth much.”
The county counsel, David Zaltsman, questioned the degree of success that SPAWN’s attorneys achieved through litigation, stating that the SPAWN team had achieved “at best, half,” of what they had sought and, therefore, were entitled to a lesser legal fee.
“It’s a lot of money for very little result,” Mr. Zaltsman said. “But [Judge Haakenson] felt that his hands were tied, so what are you going to do?”
He noted that the process for drafting a supplemental report is underway and that the county conducted creek sampling during the dry summer months. A public hearing on the report, he said, will be held in the valley sometime after the county issues a notice of preparation in the next week or two.
In 2007, SPAWN argued that the Countywide Plan update violated CEQA because it did not take into account the cumulative environmental impacts to salmon habitat caused by future development in the valley.
Yet rather than immediately file suit, SPAWN and the county entered into a series of “tolling agreements” that prevented a lawsuit in return for a temporary moratorium on building in the valley and the county’s pledge to draft a stream conservation ordinance incorporating an analysis of cumulative impact and mitigation measures.
Judge Haakenson declined to award fees for hours spent by SPAWN attorneys defending the tolling agreements, stating in his ruling that the interests of both the county and SPAWN in this matter were “aligned,” though Ms. Sivas questioned whether the county’s interests were more aligned with SPAWN or with the valley residents.
In 2010, the county prepared a Salmon Enhancement Plan at a cost of $300,000 that, again, SPAWN deemed insufficient. SPAWN sued to compel the county to prepare a streamside ordinance, and although the court ruled in SPAWN’s favor on this count it also determined that the Countywide Plan’s environmental impact report was acceptable.
In 2012, SPAWN appealed the ruling and, the next year, filed another suit against the county in response to its adoption of a streamside conservation ordinance that did not analyze cumulative impacts. In 2014, SPAWN finally tasted some victory when a state appellate court ordered that the county draft a supplemental environmental impact report, though it denied SPAWN’s request to temporarily halt development in the valley.
Peggy Sheneman, a longtime SPAWN opponent and member of the board of directors for the San Geronimo Valley Stewards, argued outside the courtroom last Friday that SPAWN, not the county, has been burdening taxpayers.
“It’s other people’s money,” Ms. Sheneman said. “People are very loose when they’re paying with other people’s money. And I don’t think there’s a private client in the world that would pay that bill.”
She reasoned that fees awarded to the SPAWN attorneys could, instead, have gone toward repairing a series of jump pools at Roy’s Pools in the valley that, in 1997, replaced a crumbling dam where juvenile salmon were being prevented from making their seasonal runs. SPAWN and several other groups, including Trout Unlimited and the county, implemented designs provided by engineers from the National Marine Fisheries Service at a cost of $30,000 to remove the dam and install three pools.
According to Gail Seymour, a senior environmental specialist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, a project proposal is in the works to remove the pools, which during summer have long been leaking to such low levels that juvenile salmon become trapped and unable to make their usual runs. The department is still working out the funding details, Ms. Seymour said, though she expects the bill will tally in the hundreds of thousands. She added that the details of the plan will most likely be revealed sometime in the spring.
“We didn’t design the project,” Mr. Steiner said. “We did help make it happen, and we were also the first ones in year one to point out that there were problems. But to blame it on SPAWN is absurd.”
This article was corrected on Dec. 21.