A series of an independent tests found bacteria levels well above health standards in several water bodies around the Point Reyes National Seashore, according to a report released last week by the environmental nonprofit Turtle Island Restoration Network.
At Kehoe Lagoon, where the creek of the same name widens as it hits the sands of Kehoe Beach, E. coli levels were recorded up to 21 times the acceptable limit for swimming. Upstream on Kehoe Creek just off Pierce Point Road, fecal coliform levels were high enough to make even non-contact recreation like picnicking or hiking nearby potentially unsafe. Near where tiny Schooner Creek empties into Drakes Estero, fecal coliform was 174 times the suitable threshold for shellfish harvesting.
“This is a public health risk at this point, not just an environmental or philosophical issue,” said Scott Webb, Turtle Island’s director of advocacy and policy. “If this was happening in Yosemite, people would be losing their minds.”
Park spokeswoman Melanie Gunn declined an interview request and did not respond to a series of emailed questions, citing pending litigation against the park.
Water quality has become a focal point for environmental activists who oppose ranching in the seashore. As the California Coastal Commission prepares to review a revised water quality plan submitted by park officials last month, ranching opponents acted on their own, sponsoring a new round of testing across the peninsula by geoenvironmental engineer Doug Lovell that builds on private testing conducted early last year. Mr. Lovell and a coalition of activists timed the release of the report to coincide with the commission’s review of the water quality plan.
Using guidelines established by state regulators, Mr. Lovell and a team of 30 volunteers sampled water in several Point Reyes streams and lagoons between October 2021 and January 2022, comparing them to various state standards meant to protect swimmers, kayakers and oyster eaters against gastrointestinal disease.
“I would not wade in Kehoe Lagoon or the intermittent outlet stream from Kehoe Lagoon,” Mr. Lovell told the Light. “I would not wade or do other recreation like kayaking in the upper reaches on Schooner Bay or Home Bay.”
Mr. Lovell measured the bacteria levels against thresholds for swimming, though visitors rarely swim at any of the sites he studied. West Marin’s beaches tend to have excellent water quality for swimmers in the dry months, and often poor quality in the winter. The 2022 Beach Report Card released by Heal the Bay gave Drakes Beach an A in the summer and a B in wet conditions. Heart’s Desire and Shell Beaches, which are not immediately downstream of any ranches, got A+ ratings in the summer and F grades after major rains, while Drakes Estero got a B in summer and an F after rain.
Regardless of swimming conditions, Mr. Lovell said the elevated bacteria levels indicate the presence of manure that could also lead to harmful algae and cyanobacteria blooms, which can kill aquatic organisms.
In January 2021, Mr. Lovell took samples at Kehoe Lagoon, Abbotts Lagoon and Schooner Creek on two days and found similarly excessive levels of fecal indicator bacteria. At the time, the park had not conducted regular monitoring on the Pacific Ocean side of the peninsula since 2013, but park and county health officials cautioned that the “snapshot” of water quality after gully-washing rains was not enough to show a pattern.
Yet since then, the park has faced more scrutiny over the impacts of ranching. After the coastal commission conditioned its approval of the park’s updated management plan on the creation of a new water quality strategy, the park restarted monitoring in several waterways last winter. Its own tests have also uncovered problems.
At Kehoe Creek, which parallels the trail to the beach, three consecutive monthly samples showed excessive E. coli levels, triggering closer inspection. Park officials identified “short-term and long-term corrective actions” to be implemented by the J Ranch dairy just upstream, and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board inspected the dairy. By Nov. 1, dairy farmer Tim Kehoe must take actions including scraping surfaces, hauling out manure, and cleaning and winterizing an area underneath the Pierce Point Road crossing, he told the Light. The park service noted that there is currently no flow in the creek.
In a phone interview, Mr. Kehoe, whose family has farmed at J Ranch for a century, enumerated the actions his operation has taken in the past two decades to prevent runoff and comply with regulations, including building new barns, waste ponds, and fencing off all the creeks and drainages that run through the ranch.
But he said he often sees wildlife, including tule elk and many birds, wading in the creeks during the winter, and believes their waste contributes to bacteria levels in the creek and lagoon. “People want the water pristine,” he said. “You’re in a national park with a lot of wildlife. I don’t think it’s gonna happen.” He added that he would not swim in the lagoon.
J Ranch has a smaller elk presence than some of the park’s other dairies. Last year, park officials counted 45 free-ranging elk in the upper point, an area that encompasses Mr. Kehoe’s operations. By comparison, the Drakes Beach herd, centered on C, D and E Ranches, numbered more than 150. Mr. Lovell determined that elk waste could have incidentally contributed to the high bacteria levels at several points in the Drakes Estero watershed, but not in the Kehoe watershed.
The park’s new water quality strategy shows two other sites where staff recorded bacteria levels that overshot health standards: Abbotts Creek at Pierce Point Road, and Home Ranch Creek before it drains into Drakes Estero. At Abbotts Creek, downstream of I Ranch, the park found no visual indications of poor water quality, and levels were lower in the following months. At Home Ranch Creek, levels returned to normal the following month.
Cattle rancher Kevin Lunny, who leases the G Ranch, said Mr. Lovell’s testing was unnecessary given the park’s own newly revitalized water quality plan, and was clearly orchestrated to appear just before the coastal commission hearing. G Ranch drains into Schooner Creek and lower Abbotts Lagoon.
“The activists’ report, even if it’s accurate, is at best redundant,” Mr. Lunny said. “And they’re drawing conclusions from indicator bacteria that are simply inferences.”
Mr. Lunny, who operated Drakes Bay Oyster Company until it was shuttered by the National Park Service in 2012, said the the long history of oyster farming in the estero belied the report’s alarm bells. Oysters were harvested for nearly a century in Drakes Estero, he said, and producers like his family consistently tested the water, finding it acceptable for aquaculture even when there were more dairies, more cattle, and few special management practices intended to keep watersheds clean.
“Since we got kicked out, the watersheds are even better and cleaner,” Mr. Lunny said. “There’s more riparian fencing, fewer livestock, and better management.”
Yet some experts say Mr. Lovell’s report is unambiguously worrying. Kara Nelson, an environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley who studies water pathogens, said the elevated bacterial concentrations are clear evidence of fecal contamination, and said Mr. Lovell’s work appeared to be careful and rigorous. “Human waste could also be a source, which would be even more concerning than cow manure as the source,” Ms. Nelson said. Elk manure could also contribute, she added, but “based on the sampling locations, I agree with the conclusion that the dominant source is cattle ranching operations.”
David Lewis, the director of the U.C. Cooperative Extension for Marin, said Mr. Lovell’s report mirrors the park’s own revamped monitoring. Both the private testing and the park’s own testing show high variability, he said, and neither program isolates the precise sources of the fecal indicator bacteria. But the park and state regulators are already taking steps to make ranching less harmful to watersheds, Mr. Lewis said. “I’m encouraged, not necessarily by either set of data, but by the actions that the park is taking,” he said.
In a letter to the coastal commission, Laura Cunningham, the California director of the Western Watersheds Project, argued that the park’s recent actions aimed at improving water quality have been the result of activism, public outcry and the commission’s oversight. Ms. Cunningham, a plaintiff in the pending lawsuit over the park’s plan to extend longer ranching leases, said the only solution is to close the park’s ranches and dairies. “Only the removal of livestock from [the park],” she wrote, “will halt the manure deposition, storm runoff of manure into water bodies, the trampling and erosion of soils, and impacts to natural resources.”
Yet the conclusion that ranching needs to be eliminated, rather than improved, is one informed by philosophy more than science, Mr. Lewis suggested. “It’s an understanding and a values and a belief debate,” he said.