Marin County: What it needs to do to recover Coho Salmon

When you have an ache, it doesn't stop you, but it affects your performance. When you have multiple aches, the impacts pile on and can be debilitating. Cumulative impacts on the  environment are like this--they add up until ecosystem processes stop functioning, or the cumulative noise and light pollution make you just want to move away. And California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) analyses have traditionally done a very poor job of analyzing and mitigating cumulative effects. If they had done a good job, our impacts on the environment would have been arrested at 1970 levels when CEQA was passed. Just imagine if we still had a 1970s level of development in California (ok, skip the beards and bell bottoms). In a state where so many impacts are already cumulatively significant, as a general rule, it just makes sense to mitigate any new impacts. It is the only responsible way to act. We typically don't do that, but in the case of Coho Salmon in San Geronimo Valley, the courts have ruled that we should. And Marin County is legally on the hook for doing it.


About five years ago, my wife and I were moving to San Geronimo, where she grew up. I heard that the county was hiring a San Geronimo Valley Planner to manage permitting in the Valley related to the salmon enhancement and streamside ordinance. The timing was perfect, and the job would be perfect--I had a background in CEQA, in watershed management, and in stream restoration. I called the county about the position, only to find out that it had been filled internally. I ended up keeping my job and working from home remotely.

Almost five years later, I read Supervisor Kinsey's comments from late July with disappointment. Kinsey seems to forget that although it sucks to be sued, it also sucks to have to sue. His frustration at the county's spending versus the little accomplished is understandable. But in this contentious issue that often gets framed as property rights vs. salmon, most of the blame is a distraction from where we should be putting our energy--into fixing the problem. Both "sides" have made mistakes, and holding on to grievances and blaming the other side can divert a lot of attention from the important work that needs to be done. There are strong opinions on both "sides" in this small community (SPAWN vs. Stewards, as well as Montessori vs. Open vs. Waldorf). I really don't like conflict, and wish people could just work together to do the right thing--but I've worked for 20 years for an organization with "cooperative solutions" in its mission, and I get that most people don't think this way.

So Marin County was sued for inadequately mitigating cumulative impacts on Coho Salmon. Marin County lost. The county appealed and lost again when its EIR was invalidated (I'm ignoring here the county's wins on the rulings on injunctions related to these matters since, although important, it is distracting from the main issue of the adequacy of the cumulative impacts analysis). This is a very frustrating pattern to see, when counties dig in their heels and keep losing lawsuits instead of following the law. Especially when it costs them legal fees that could have been better spent solving the problem.

The path forward is simple to find, but not politically easy to follow. The built environment of the San Geronimo Valley is often poorly-sited, and poorly-designed, when impacts to Coho Salmon are considered. There is a legacy here that will take time and money to reverse, and we'd better get started sooner rather than later, so that future generations aren't stuck where we are now, with poorly-planned development and declining salmon populations.

The solution, as with any restoration project, is to first stop the impacts. Which means no more bad buildings in bad places. We've got to stop making the problem worse. That is a basic, fundamental step that must be taken. And the County must enforce that. Then, once we stop racking up new impacts, the second priority is to slowly improve conditions over time. For this--to deal with the existing impacts--you need to set bold, ambitious goals.

Goals must be uncompromising. You can modify strategies based on politics, but not goals. The goals are the right things to do based on science and law, and no matter how hard it seems to achieve them, if they aren't stated, they won't ever be achieved (well-known examples include no net loss of wetlands, renewable energy targets, vehicle mileage standards, reducing carbon emissions, etc.). We have to try. And with ingenuity and advances in knowledge and technology, the goals will probably be achieved sooner and more cheaply than anyone setting them would expect. But if you don't set them, you've already failed without even trying.

Taking a watershed approach means looking at all the impacts in the watershed and how they interact. Contrary to the Courts' and the County's focus, it means not just focusing on riparian areas near streams. Sure, streamside areas can and should be given more weight, but the non-streamside areas must be part of the equation. Under certain conditions (such as rain), paving 10 acres away from a stream isn't necessarily any better than paving 1 acre next to a stream. The functional importance of watershed areas is based on soils and hydrology and vegetation. This sidesteps a lot of the debate about stream conservation zones and how big they should be, since there is no one-size-fits-all answer. There are a lot of good rules of thumb (e.g. bigger than your thumb), but it will take some leadership to get off our thumbs here.

Once quantified for each parcel, cumulative watershed effects can be banked or traded. Just like a water district could (and should) make any new development project totally offset its water use by investing in conservation in already existing developments, any newly proposed impacts must be fully mitigated. Water and energy impacts (due to the interconnected supply system and ease of measurement) lend themselves to this type of mitigation, but it is not that much harder when it comes to other resources. If someone wants to build, there can be no net increase in impervious surfaces. The accounting is simple. You either make your development "green" with permeable paving and bioswales, or you pay someone else to reduce their impervious surfaces. Flexibility is key, that way everyone's goals can be accomplished. This is the only long-term sustainable path forward that addresses real impacts and allows everyone (except the paving industry) to achieve their goals.

But it is important to accomplish this not just from a prohibitive standpoint, not just a minimalist property-rights/value perspective, but also from an ecosystem perspective. An aspirational one. Inspire and encourage people to do the right things. Educate. Make it easy to succeed and hard to fail. Not just the carrot and the stick, but cookies too.

Fundamental in this approach is the idea that we can't let anyone make things worse--we must partner with all to make things better. Creative funding mechanisms (from taxes, fees, grants, fundraisers, fines) will grease the wheels of restoration progress. Assist owners of existing development in expanding native riparian acreage and removing weeds and development from streamsides and reducing impervious surfaces and allowing large woody debris to remain in the stream channel.

Another mechanism that would be wise to incorporate is a way for new scientific findings to directly inform planning decisions without the need to go through a big process. Streamlined Adaptive Management. Once approved by an independent scientific advisory panel, goals in plans could be updated immediately in draft form until adopted, but if adoption is delayed, planners could begin implementing the best available science as soon as possible. Land use goals that primarily stem from natural limitations should be connected to a scientific process and disconnected from the political process as much as possible. Again, the strategy for getting there can be as political as you want, with grandfathering in things, setting long timelines for uses to expire, and finding funding assistance. But long-term goals should be insulated from local politics when it is simply a matter of applying accepted science and law. The Open Space District's road and trail plan workshop in October in San Geronimo was a good example of habitat goals set by professional resource management professionals being immutable, but how to achieve them being flexible and open to public comment (Unfortunately the structure and under-facilitation of that overcrowded meeting was not conducive to allowing everyone to participate).

If we do this, in another five years we will have a lot more to be proud of than just more legal fights and blame. And with the right leadership, San Geronimo Valley could be a showcase for how to cooperatively restore a salmon watershed. But we have to get past the baggage and blame and focus on the work. And start making cookies.

This is the second part of a two-part series on cumulative impacts in Mono and Marin Counties. Read part 1 on Mono County.