Now in its second year, the 24-hour hotline for anonymously reporting suspected environmental code violations along creek beds in the San Geronimo Valley—part of an effort to safeguard the fragile watershed—has received 26 calls, none of which ultimately revealed infractions. The watershed, home to one of the largest remaining wild runs of coho salmon in California, has been the focus of new regulations since 2022, when the county adopted a suite of rules as part of a settlement agreement with the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network. The new stream conservation area ordinance included a plan to monitor homeowners whose construction projects could endanger fish habitat, both with a 24-hour complaint hotline and a process for reviewing proposed projects. Only two projects have been submitted for review in the past two years. For the hotline, the county contracts with an external answering service, and it allocates funds to ensure its own inspectors are on call seven days a week to investigate reported violations. In the most recent biennial report presented to the Board of Supervisors last week, county staff said eight complaints were made between Jan. 1 and June 15. Of these, only one led to an investigation, which found no violation. Despite the low number of actionable complaints, the code compliance team dedicates around 1,600 hours a year to handling stream conservation area issues outside regular business hours. The county compensates its five-person code enforcement staff with $19,500 annually for that work. “It’s costly to the county, and we want to make sure that we’re using our resources where they’re warranted,” said Sarah Jones, director of the Marin County Community Development Agency. Ms. Jones said the county had no choice but to implement the hotline due to its settlement with SPAWN. The S.C.A. ordinance, the result of a 2007 lawsuit brought by the conservation nonprofit, established a new suite of regulations to limit development, including a 35-foot buffer along San Geronimo Creek and its tributaries to protect riparian habitat. The settlement included a provision for reviewing the necessity of the hotline after five years. Ms. Jones acknowledged the costs associated with the program and emphasized the need to reassess its effectiveness. “If things continue as they are, we’ll need to consider whether this is truly the most effective approach to achieving the ordinance’s overall goal of environmental protection in the S.C.A.,” she told the Light.