There’s no relief in sight for Adrienne Terrass and her husband, Aldo Tarigo, homeowners in the San Geronimo Valley who have been trying to obtain permits to renovate their house since 2011.
Last week, the Board of Supervisors pushed the couple to further compromise with county staff and once again revise their design review application. The primary sticking point is a bridge that the couple built without permits over Barranca Creek, a tributary of San Geronimo Creek that borders their property, in 2006.
Supervisors in part sided with county staff, refusing to grant after-the-fact permits for the bridge, which county engineers assert does not comply with standards. But they did not support a staff recommendation to mandate an environmental impact report—the alternative staff provided to tearing down the bridge—and instead directed the homeowners to modify the bridge placement and design to meet county standards.
Supervisor Dennis Rodoni acknowledged the heartache. “County staff has applied the rules correctly and fairly, but honestly, this project has dragged on way too long,” he said at last Tuesday’s hearing. “The project is an example of how difficult it is to remodel and upgrade a property next to a stream in the San Geronimo Valley. And the challenges may have been compounded due to the fact that the bridge construction preceded first receiving county approvals.”
Supported by the four other supervisors, Mr. Rodoni provided this direction: “I do believe that removing the bridge may have significant environmental impacts and, quite honestly, is wasteful. I encourage staff and the applicants to revisit the existing bridge and look at mitigation elsewhere in the area to benefit the watershed to possibly offset that reconstruction.”
The project that Ms. Terrass and Mr. Tarigo proposed foremost hopes to raze and rebuild an existing two-story residence and an unpermitted second unit. When the planning commission considered the proposal last August, the project showed an overall drop in size from 2,698 to 2,240 square feet and a series of mitigation measures such as reducing the impervious surface around the house and planting native grasses.
The project would also legalize the bridge, which the couple says was built to replace a decaying bridge in hasty preparation for winter storms; the owners say they were encouraged to do so by staff at the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network. Mr. Tarigo, an architect, designed the bridge himself and has assured the county that he built it to code.
Still, staff from the department of public works disagrees about the bridge’s code compliance. In county planner Tammy Taylor’s report to supervisors last week, she wrote, “Due to the fact that the [bridge’s] abutments were constructed below the top of the bank and into Barranca creek, the bridge does not meet county code requirements with regards to keeping permanent obstructions out of the sensitive creek bank areas, and there remains a potentially significant, unavoidable impact with regards to flood, environmental and safety hazards from the bridge.”
County staff recommended removing the bridge and, in response to an ongoing dispute with the homeowners and their hired hydrologist, proposed that the only possible way to keep the existing bridge would be to conduct an environmental impact report, Ms. Taylor said.
“With disagreements amongst experts, including the contradicting opinion of the applicant’s hydrologist, D.P.W. staff’s expert opinion alone is enough to require preparation of an E.I.R. if the impacts are not mitigated to a less than significant level,” Ms. Taylor wrote to the board.
She laid out two roads for supervisors: deny the project and direct the owners to modify the placement and design of the bridge consistent with all applicable development standards, or deny the project and require the owners to proceed with an E.I.R. The board chose the former.
The planning commission was more sympathetic to the homeowners during a hearing last August. Commissioners held firm on one point, however, directing Mr. Tarigo and Ms. Terrass to create an alternative to their project that pulled the design for their new house entirely out of a 20-foot drainage setback. The board expressed appreciation for that alternative, which the applicants brought before them last week, but the issue of the bridge persisted.
The planning commission was more lenient on the bridge, denying the couple’s appeal so it could move on to the board of the supervisors, which it hoped would exercise its authority to override the department of public work’s decision.
Ms. Taylor recounted this logic in her report to the board: “[The commission] found that the applicant’s request for an exception to those [bridge] standards has merit because demolition of the bridge may cause adverse impacts to the existing riparian habitat and because state and federal resource agencies have indicated preliminary support for allowing the bridge to remain in place rather than requiring it to be demolished and replaced with a new bridge.”
The project been delayed for nearly 10 years in part because SPAWN sued the county in 2011 over its countywide plan, which resulted in a 2014 court order that mandated the county prepare an impact analysis on the cumulative effect of development on threatened and endangered salmonid species in the San Geronimo Valley.
The lawsuit first imposed an injunction on development and later changed development standards, requiring the county to use the 1994 countywide plan development standards versus the ones in the 2007 plan for any new development projects in the valley.
When evaluating whatever proposal Ms. Terrass and Mr. Tarigo bring back for their home, county staff will have to update their assessment based on the 2007 countywide plan, considering that the board finally certified the supplemental environmental impact report that addressed the cumulative impacts on Tuesday.
Tom Lai, the assistant director of the community development agency, told the Light this week that he did not anticipate the standards to shift drastically in regard to this project. Still, considering that the home borders Barranca Creek, it will eventually be subject to new standards under a planned expanded stream conservation ordinance the S.E.I.R. commits the county to implement within the next five years.