Trash and human waste left on the shores of the Bolinas Lagoon were the topic of discussion at the most recent meeting of the Bolinas Lagoon Advisory Council. While some locals voiced fears that a homeless encampment that has occupied a pullout on Olema-Bolinas Road for the past two years was impacting the estuary, council members said their primary concerns stem from the other end of the lagoon. There, fishermen, overnight campers and day trippers are using and abusing an area that lacks bathrooms and garbage receptacles. The threat that fecal matter poses to the lagoon’s ecology and wildlife should not be ignored, they say.
The 1,100-acre lagoon is a haven for migrating birds, seals and special-status plant and animal species. Though the county regularly takes water samples at Stinson and Bolinas Beaches, it does not test the lagoon for fecal indicators.
At its biannual meeting last month, the council discussed the threat of pollution and both the possibilities and risks of relocating the homeless camp.
This winter, after residents of the encampment dug two trenches to reduce flooding around their vehicles, a citizen complaint led staff with the Marin Countywide Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program to investigate the area. No active discharge or signs of pollution were visible, said Julian Kaelon, a spokesman for the county’s Department of Public Works.
Mike Thompson, a homeless liaison with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, has checked on the site twice a month since he was first notified of the camp last spring. He said at one point he was receiving multiple calls a week related to the encampment, but he never observed anything more than some loose trash that was always cleaned up. Calls have dwindled since the fall, he said.
“Some of the other encampments in Marin where human waste is being dumped—it’s very evident,” he said. “The ground is physically impacted by it and the smell is evident and we just haven’t seen it there.”
But Kelly Green, a resident who lives across the street from the pullout, told the council that he has observed marked changes since the campers arrived.
“I’m absolutely sympathetic to the homeless, but this is not the right place for them,” he said. “I have caught them going off into the woods and defecating. And if we’re talking about environmental impacts, there used to be egrets that [roost] there, and they don’t anymore. My concern is that I hear we do have services, but what I don’t hear is a timeline on when they’ll be housed.”
Mr. Green’s comments received a round of applause from several residents at the meeting, and he and others proposed that the campers be relocated to another site in town. The vehicle occupants were once housed in Bolinas and shouldn’t be forced out of their community, the residents said.
But Marin County Sheriff’s Lt. Heather Rock and county officials reiterated their stance against towing or displacing residents, citing two Ninth Circuit rulings.
“We have good instruction from the courts that these people can’t be moved without services and opportunities for housing,” Supervisor Dennis Rodoni said. “Our process is to monitor and work with them to move into another form of
housing.”
A trailer, an R.V. and two cars are currently stationed at the pullout. Though the owner of the R.V. has vacated due to a mold problem, the man who lives in the trailer, a Bolinas resident of 20 years who lost his home when the Waterhouse building burned, said he would gladly relocate to another site in town but has no interest in going to a shelter over the hill due to concerns for his safety. He said he was being towed to Brighton Avenue last spring when two of the trailer’s tires gave out by the pullout. He said his trailer has a septic tank that a porta-potty service drains when he can afford to pay for it.
Ralph Camiccia, a member of the advisory council who represents Bolinas, said he understands that the county’s hands are tied but was disappointed in the lack of response when the campers dug the trenches last October. He said that years ago, the council successfully lobbied Caltrans to repave Highway 1’s pullouts along the lagoon with a permeable asphalt that filters hazardous materials from vehicles. The pullout on Olema-Bolinas Road has no such filtration mechanism.
When the trenches were dug, “[the residents] drained that whole parking area, which is just filled with oil and debris from cars parked there and tractors,” Mr. Camiccia said.
He explained that the pullout is often used as a staging area for equipment owned by Caltrans, PG&E and other construction companies. In the early 2000s, the advisory council asked the county to build a berm to contain discharge from vehicles, council members said. This year’s parade of storms brought numerous downed trees and landslides to the area, but Caltrans and PG&E were unable to use the pullout because it was too crowded.
Despite some residents’ frustration with the longstanding homeless camp, council members say the lagoon’s east shore has been a bigger issue for a far longer time. Member Gwen Heistand, who represents Audubon Canyon Ranch, said day trippers have caused the most destruction. The stretch of Highway 1 around the lagoon has roughly 20 pullouts with room for two to three vehicles each. The area is a destination for kayakers, fishermen and tourists, but unlike other coastal parks in Marin, Sonoma and Mendocino Counties, there are no bathrooms.
The closest bathrooms are in Stinson Beach and downtown Bolinas. Max Korten, the director and general manager for Marin County Parks, told the Light that adding a porta-potty is not always the best waste-management solution.
“It’s a tough trade off,” he said. “It’s something we would definitely consider, but the flip side is that sometimes if you add a porta-potty, it can signal to folks that they should spend more time there and people can end up putting more trash there. We have limited service. We want to be adaptive, and sometimes it’s a good decision to add facilities but we want to be intentional and not make the problem worse.”
Joe Mueller, a marine biology professor at College of Marin who sits on the council, said providing access and parking but no services is an invitation for trouble.
“There’s a whole lot of [feces and urine] on that shore from itinerant campers and fishermen. I see it when I bring classes out,” he said. He added that in a body of water as shallow and warm as the lagoon, fecal pathogens can lead to the overgrowth of bacteria.
Matt O’Donnell, a spokesman for Caltrans, said placing a porta-potty along the east shore of the lagoon would require a formal agreement between the county and Caltrans.
Richard James, a board member of the Tomales Bay Foundation, said the most problematic area is a pullout by McKinnan Gulch where fishermen and crabbers park. Mr. James said that since the start of the pandemic, the level of waste from careless tourists has skyrocketed. “I have seen evidence of people defecating in the creek bed on both sides of Route 1 [near the gulch],” he said. “There are other areas where fishermen congregate and occasionally defecate on the shore, but this one area is the most problematic, in my view.”
The county’s Community Development Agency has tested for fecal coliform at both Stinson and Bolinas Beaches weekly from April through October since 2003, but it does not test the lagoon. Arti Kundu, a project manager for the agency, said that activity in the lagoon “would have an impact on Bolinas Beach.” The county issues public health advisories once or twice a year for Stinson and Bolinas Beaches, always after heavy rains bring contaminants down the watershed, Ms. Kundu said.
The Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board funds testing at locations in Marin that meet two criteria: they receive more than 50,000 visitors a year and are adjacent to a storm drain that flows during the summer. Storm drains on Wharf Road in Bolinas drain directly into the lagoon, but no measurements are taken on the lagoon’s annual visitors. The county parks department funds testing at other popular swimming areas in the Tomales Bay watershed where there are concerns over water quality.