By New Year’s Day, there should be no
more oysters in Drakes Estero, a placid estuary in the Point Reyes
National Seashore that has been, for the better part of eight years, the
setting for a tempest of epic proportions.
Ranchers, environmentalists,
scientists, food lovers and famous chefs, members of Congress and a bevy
of lawyers have been embroiled in the conflict over a family-owned farm
that planted millions of tiny oysters in the estero’s cold, clear
waters and harvested $1.5 million worth of table-ready bivalves a year,
continuing an aquaculture operation dating back to the 1930s.
Questions over the Drakes Bay Oyster
Co.’s impact, good or bad, on the 2,500-acre Pacific Ocean estuary, and
how the company was treated by the federal government, fairly or
unfairly, raised passions that likely will persist for years in west
Marin County and beyond.
But two things are clear: Those
questions were never answered in a two-year legal battle that went to
the U.S. Supreme Court’s doorstep, and to some degree they no longer
matter because the oysters are rapidly disappearing, with workers
hauling them out by the boatload each day.
“Kind of a mad dash to get
everything out of the bay,” co-owner Kevin Lunny said last week,
standing near the water’s edge at the company’s small base at the north
end of Schooner Bay, one of the estero’s five fingers.
Three large piles of unopened
oysters lay nearby, and as Lunny talked, a double-barge load of oysters
in black plastic grow bags approached the weathered dock, adjacent to
the oyster sales shack that was shuttered in July.
There are 1 to 2 million oysters
remaining in the estero, and Lunny’s company has until midnight Dec. 31
to get them all out and to vacate the site, according to a settlement
agreement approved by a federal judge in October, ending two years of
litigation.
The National Park Service, which
prevailed in court, is now making plans to scrape the company’s 5-acre
site clear of structures and remove everything else, including five
miles of wooden oyster racks embedded in the estero’s sandy bottom,
restoring the waterway to a natural condition seen by few living people.
That work should be completed by the
end of next year, and the estero — home to a harbor seal colony, bat
rays, leopard sharks, crabs and vast beds of green eelgrass — will
continue to be a mecca for nature lovers.
“That’s why it’s so exciting,” said
Neal Desai of the National Parks Conservation Association. “This has
always been about fulfilling the protection for such an amazing place.
It’s a public interest victory.”
Meanwhile, the west Marin community,
which has been bitterly divided over the oyster farm’s fate, needs to
get on with plans for the future of the surrounding cattle ranches and
oyster farming in nearby Tomales Bay, said Marin County Supervisor Steve
Kinsey, who has represented the area for 18 years.
“The main thing is it’s over,” Kinsey said. “The wounds were deep and even when it heals there’s a scar there.”
The supervisor said he initially
supported Lunny’s bid to renew his permit for a commercial oyster
operation in a waterway designated by Congress for wilderness status.
But after former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declined to renew the
farm’s permit in November 2012, Kinsey said he decided “our job was to
live with it.”
Lunny immediately filed a federal
lawsuit, alleging the secretary’s action was “arbitrary and capricious,”
but federal judges disagreed three times and the Supreme Court ended
the matter, deciding in June that it would not hear the case that
sparked national attention and debate about for-profit use of federal
park lands.
The end of the oyster farm upholds a
promise put forward decades ago in law to fully protect Drakes Estero,
but it also severs ties to a cherished history of shellfish farming in
the waterway.
“We won a wilderness, but we lost a
legacy,” Kinsey said, referring to the generations of families that came
to Drakes Estero to buy fresh oysters and picnic on the beach. “I hear a
deep remorse from many folks who have lived here a long time.”
Amy Trainer, executive director of
the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, said the estero will
be a wildlife refuge and “a source of recreation, spiritual renewal and
refreshment” for humans. It also will be a “place to celebrate good
government in action,” she said, where wilderness values prevailed over
“the most formidable opposition.”
Melanie Gunn, the National Park
Service outreach coordinator at Point Reyes seashore, acknowledged the
conflict over Lunny’s oyster farm strained both the park and the
community. “I think we’re all grateful to be moving forward,” she said.
For Lunny, the end means sending his
crew out, rain or shine, to bring in three to four barge loads a day,
with 30,000 to 40,000 oysters per load. “It’s going to take every minute
between now and Dec. 31 to get them all out,” he said last week.
Lunny’s reports to the Park Service,
mandated by the settlement agreement, said his company removed nearly
500,000 oysters from the estero in September and October, with no report
in yet for November.
The oysters are coming in so fast
that many, including those too small to sell, are piled on the beach to
rot, while the rest are shipped to restaurants and markets. “This is
food being destroyed,” Lunny said, gesturing toward a fresh pile of
mollusks that would sell for as much as $3.50 each if served on a
half-shell at a restaurant.
The abandoned oysters will be
trucked to a ranch, where they will dry and bleach in the sun for two
years, killing everything inside and on the gnarled shells, which are
then used in habitat restoration projects, including snowy plover
nesting sites.
Lunny, whose family purchased the
oyster farm in 2004, shared that he still thinks the Supreme Court would
have ruled in his favor had it taken the case, but said he understands
that the justices “have a lot of important cases” and consider only a
fraction of them — actually about 1 percent of the 10,000 cases the high
court receives each year.
Among those who rallied to the
oyster farm’s defense were famed Berkeley chef Alice Waters, who
co-signed a legal brief that praised the Lunnys’ dedication to
“sustainable agriculture,” and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who
sought to grant the oyster farm a new permit through legislation in 2009
but wound up with a bill that left the decision up to the Interior
Secretary.
In the end, the courts upheld
Salazar’s decision, which he said was based on matters of law and
policy, setting aside the allegations of scientific misconduct by the
park service that had provoked Feinstein’s involvement.
“We’re accepting it,” Lunny said. “We’re moving forward.”
The family plans to open a
restaurant with an “oyster-centric” menu at the Tomales Bay Resort in
Inverness in January or February. The Lunnys also plan to continue
supplying their wholesale customers — about 70 restaurants and markets,
mostly in Sonoma and Marin counties — with oysters from Tomales Bay,
Humboldt Bay, the Pacific Northwest and the Pacific Coast of Baja,
Mexico.
Down the road, Lunny said he hopes to get back into oyster farming, possibly in Tomales Bay.
Supervisor Kinsey, who is also
chairman of the California Coastal Commission, said that body just
approved an oyster production master plan for Humboldt Bay and may do
the same for Tomales Bay, a step that could make room for new operations
in the bay that separates Point Reyes Peninsula from the mainland.
“Kevin is probably eying that as an opportunity,” he said.
The settlement agreement committed
the government to provide federal relocation benefits to “qualified
employees” of the oyster farm who were living in five worker housing
units on Nov. 29, 2012, the date Salazar declined to renew the permit.
Paul Cohen, executive director of
Legal Aid of Marin, said he is representing more than a dozen families
who are candidates for the benefits, and Gunn said three families had
applied for them. Cohen and Gunn declined to name any of the families
Friday.
“We’re in the process of
determining what benefits all of the workers are entitled to,” Cohen
said. The five trailers at the oyster farm were “shared housing” for
multiple families, he said.
Gunn said she was surprised by the
number of families, noting that officials had visited the oyster farm
immediately after Salazar’s decision, giving the park service “a pretty
good idea” of the number of eligible families.
The benefits generally pay a tenant
displaced by government action the difference between the rent plus
utilities at their former residence and the cost of new housing for up
to 42 months, said Greg Gress, a park service realty officer in San
Francisco. The program also provides a contractor who will find
displaced tenants comparable housing that must be “decent, safe and
sanitary” in a location of the tenant’s choice.
As soon as the contractor is hired,
“we’re going to work very diligently to find suitable replacement
housing,” he said. Tenants are entitled to remain in the trailers until
March 31, three months after the company must get off the site.
Lunny confirmed that his daughter
and son-in-law, who were employees and residents at the oyster farm on
the appropriate date, should be eligible for relocation benefits.
The park service also is making
plans to demolish the oyster sales shack, worker housing units and other
structures, all of them timeworn and overdue for repairs. The Lunnys
bought the business, with eight years remaining on the use permit, in
2004. Charlie Johnson, the previous owner, had sold his property to the
government in 1972, receiving a 40-year operating permit.
Nothing will be cleared from the
land until the new year, and Gunn said the agency is lining up the
necessary permits and consulting with regulators on how to go about
removing the oyster racks — accounting for about 250,000 board feet of
lumber in the estero — “with a minimal amount of impact.”
Each of the 95 racks is 300 feet
long and 12 feet wide, on average, and they are supported by a total of
4,700 posts sunk into the estero’s soft mud and sand bottom. The lumber
weighs about 375 tons, or possibly more due to absorbed water.
Future use of the oyster shack for
another purpose — for example, as a farmers market — is not feasible,
Gunn said, because it lies in a flood zone. It was inundated during a
high tide on Thursday.
The park service is aware of
collapsed racks, oyster-growing tubes, plastic bags and other debris on
the estero floor, Gunn said. All of it will be removed — at taxpayers’
expense — under the terms of the settlement agreement negotiated by
lawyers for Lunny and the Interior Department. The cleanup cost has yet
to be determined by the park service, but in a declaration submitted
along with his lawsuit Lunny said it would cost more than $400,000 to do
it with his own workers.
The agreement specifically exempts
Lunny’s company from responsibility for removing any onshore or offshore
structures or apparatus, oyster racks, shells, trash or “biological
material” and from any obligation to grade or re-vegetate the site.
Asked why Lunny was not paying for
the cleanup, Gunn said the park service was satisfied that the
settlement agreement is “fair and in the public interest.”
“It’s a mutual agreement,” she said, noting that Lunny agreed to drop all litigation.
Trainer and Desai, the wilderness
advocates, said they have always preferred that the park service handle
the cleanup, even if it is at public expense. “They are the only entity
that would do it right,” Trainer said.
Article and Photos Sourced From: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/home/3204619-181/facing-closure-deadline-drakes-bay?page=0
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