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All-Out for Tolay

The 35 farmers and landowners in the Sonoma Creek and Petaluma River basins applied for their usual "general permit" for dredging in 1990. The dredging, which had been going on for close to a century, was necessary to maintain the 40 miles of levees that protected their lands from flooding. For the past two decades, the permit renewal had gone off without cost or hitch. But this time, for the first time, a consultation with U.S. Fish & Wildlife required them to create a new tidal marsh as mitigation for potential disturbance of an endangered bird and mouse. "A greatly diminished population of the California clapper rail caused us to start taking a closer look at the range of activities affecting estuarine habitat," says Fish & Wildlife's Ruth Pratt.

The landowners, not exactly rich developer types, felt hard pressed to meet these new terms. Permitting costs alone for the group swelled from approximately $100 in 1985 to $10,000 in 1990, according to landowner Norm Yenni. "We struggled through the paperwork for two years, but didn't get anywhere," says Tish Ward of the local Resource Conservation District, which represented the 35 landowners. In 1993,they went to Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey for help. Woolsey brought the interested parties together, 20 in all, and spent 18 months negotiating an agreement that singled out Tolay Creek and its environs as their mitigation solution.

A hundred years ago, Tolay Creek was a tidal slough big enough for barges to reach a rock quarry over three miles from San Pablo Bay. But since farms and levees have grown up around the creek, limiting its tidal sustenance, a portion has shrunk to a narrow channel choked with peppergrass and surrounded by dry, dead marsh. For several years, this area has been a restoration target for state and federal agencies, especially because it overlaps with the San Pablo Bay Wildlife Refuge. When the mitigation project came up, it made sense to fold it in with these existing restoration plans.

Officials say the final project, which will total 350 acres including the mitigation marsh, will represent one of the largest North Bay restorations to date. The mitigation part will be achieved by Cal Fish & Game, not the landowners, buying 53 acres of farmland from the Vallejo Sanitation District and allowing it to revert back to tidal marshland. According to the agency's Carl Wilcox, the acreage will provide "a critical tidal prism needed to keep the restored Tolay Creek channel scoured." Seasonal dredging restrictions outside nesting periods on a small part of the project area satisfy concerns of impacts to clapper rails, and the 53 acres permanently mitigates habitat loss to the salt marsh harvest mouse.

Everyone has chipped in to fund this $450,000 project and help minimize the financial burden on the landowners. To date, Fish & Wildlife and Cal Fish & Game have each agreed to fund a third of the total. In addition, $90,000 will come from the Shell Oil Spill fund; $50,000 from Save the Bay; $25,000 from the Mosquito Abatement District and two smaller amounts from the Sonoma County Community Foundation and the Sonoma County Fish & Wildlife Advisory Board. The landowners and the Resource Conservation District will provide in-kind services such as surveying.

"It was a hard decision for my board to grant $50,000 to pay for what otherwise would have been landowner responsibility," says Save the Bay's Marc Holmes. "In this case, the historical precedent, 100 years of private dredging and the exorbitant costs of mitigation in proportion to the project and landowner resources caused us to rethink our usual policy."

At a permit signing for the Tolay restoration on June 2, speaker after speaker noted the project's significance as a national model, a "win-win solution." Though the landowners at the microphone seemed to embrace this interpretation, there remained a whisper of resignation in the air. "We still maintain we have the property rights out there," said Mitch Mulas at the ceremony.

Contact: Grant Davis (Woolsey's office) (415)507-9554

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