Fred Grange
Grange
Debris Box & Wrecking
Cathi Osugi & Marge Kolar
911 NE 11th Ave
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS)
Portland, Oregon 97232
April 16, 2001
Re: Canalways Opposition to inclusion in Baylands Refuge
Please address at least these three questions in your response:
1) If we owners of the Canalways site adamantly object to even having our property listed in the Baylands Mapping Boundary, will our property rights be respected and our land not listed in your proposed boundary?
2) Would the USF&W Service support us in working to fulfill the goals of the US Army Corp’s Long-Term Management Strategy (LTMS) for the Placement of Dredged Material in the San Francisco Bay Region calling for the beneficial reuse of dredge spoils rather than consuming tax payer money and time on a mapping project we property owners choose not to be burdened with? (See page 6 below)
3) Would you please send me a copy of the boundary delineation map you recently displayed at the property owners April meeting at St. Vincent’s?
Dear Biologist Osugi & Project Leader Kolar:
On
the 16th of January I spoke with Project Leader Marge Kolar about the Canalways
property being placed in the Baylands Refuge Zone. It was a good conversation,
and I appreciate the professionalism and good humor she showed in talking with
me.
Mz.
Kolar explained that the refuge was only being formed as a mechanism for the
FWS to obtain funds to purchase property within the refuge from willing
sellers, and that it would have no negative impacts, or create undue pressures
upon those owners who preferred to develop their properties .
Nonetheless,
I must register my concern and opposition to having the Canalways property
listed in the Baylands Refuge.
Perhaps
my initial opposition is because of the name. If the only reason for the refuge
is to title a map to depict an acquisition zone, then what does it matter what
the zone is named? Call it “Zone A” for example. I jokingly suggested calling
it a “High Intensity Development Zone”. Mz. Kolar was amused but did not
support the idea.
I
then said “since we did not wish to sell the property, and did not want it in
the refuge, why not simply exclude Canalways and only depict properties where
owners supported inclusion?” Mz. Kolar indicated that would be an unlikely
result from FWS viewpoint.
I then asked if there was a procedure that a property owner should follow to withdraw a property from consideration. She said there was none. I asked why the FWS did not simply purchase property from willing landowners without first creating a refuge, as they had done in the past? She said this was simply the approach being utilized this time around.
I have many reasons for not wanting the FWS to designate Canalways as a wildlife refuge. Allow me to tell a story or two that will hopefully explain some of those reasons.
After spending about 40 years in this neighborhood, I am approaching enough years where I can be considered one of the areas pioneering landowners, In East San Rafael, where the 85 acres Canalways property is located, I have owned many pieces of land, and have been involved in the improvement of nearly 100% of the remainder parcels.
One of those parcels included a badly degraded wetland with a brackish, environmentally dead pond. One side of that parcel included a leaking levee offering limited protection from the Bay. I say limited because the levee leaked substantial amounts of bay salt water into an otherwise fresh water pond.
The opposite side of the parcel provided freshwater drainage from US Hwy 17, Francisco Blvd., and the upland areas beyond. The two remaining sides of the site provided a toxic substance called leachate, which is a highly toxic byproduct of decomposing organic matter buried in two former abutting dumpsites. This entire cocktail continued to ooze into this environmental disaster zone. What organism could live in fresh water during the winter, salt water during the summer, and toxic leachate year around? The answer is simply nothing, and nothing did until we landowners fixed the problem.
In concert with developing our privately owned surrounding land, four of us property owners repaired the levee, installed a tide gate system to flush the pond and control it’s salinity, built a shoreline park, landscaped the area, created transitional zones suitable for different habitats, created a wildlife wonderland, and dedicated it to the city.
In around 1984 we worked hand in hand with the City Of San Rafael, under the regulatory oversight of such agencies as Fish and Wildlife, California Fish & Game, Corps of Engineers, Sierra Club, Audubon Society, etc.
We four surrounding property owners – Ghilotti, Morphew, Hanf-Poeshel and myself – funded the majority of the costs for this restoration project.
We fenced the pond to keep out feral cats, dogs and people. Birds and wildlife returned to what was once a mucky, dead water hole. In addition, our related developmental efforts benefited the regional economy as well as the broader ecosystem by:
For those landowners
who see no link between development and the regional ecology, there is a need
for regulatory agency and environment group pressure. However, too often in our well-regulated and highly pressured
Marin County, increasing that kind of oversight wastes time, energy, and money
--- and thereby harms the regional environment in the long run.
In this East San Rafael development example it took years to get through the environmental process, and much carping came from no growth advocates dressed as environmental pressure groups. After the years of carping and oversight finished, in one short season we property owners built a wonderful nature wonderland Even leaders from Marin’s environmental community, like Jean Starkweather, praised the finished product.
Eventually, the regulatory and environmental groups and the City were left to maintain our wildlife wonderland. . Unfortunately, those who impose environmental demands proved incompetent at maintaining the environmental quality we private landowners funded, developed and left them. The watering system failed and was not repaired, the native plants we installed in the transitional zones became overgrown, and trash filled the area. When a new building was proposed adjacent to the ponds, that developer once again restored the ponds.
The Canalways partnership has experienced the same weak environmental concerns and upkeep problems from government agencies and the so-called environmentally concerned groups. Examples:
Some environmental groups seem to applaud the City’s poor maintenance of the flood control pond. In fact, some of their leadership has fought the City when the City proposed laying drainage pipes to the City Pond pump house, which would more adequately deal with the heavy water runoff to the flood control pond. By failing to support better maintenance, these shortsighted environmental extremists and the City may be harming endangered species. Why do I say this? The Canalways partnership has had environmental engineers walk our site and refer to parts of it as degraded wetlands. They maintain that if the salt marsh harvest mouse SMHM) ever did live here, then the flooding of the site with its lack of hilly ground that provides refuge during flooding, and the sparse cover providing pickleweed habitat, would cause the drowning of the SMHM and/or leave it exposed as bird prey.
Private land holders
have many ways to be held accountable for improving or damaging the environment. Canalways does not need to be placed into a
refuge to insure that it properly addresses the environmental issues that may
be associated with its site. I propose
that the time, money, and effort that is spent on Canalways be budgeted to
better implementing programs that need tangible work done. Like spending money
to further improve the mistakes made on the Tolay Creek project; or to recover
the degraded environment on the degraded salt ponds presently in refuge mapped
land.
Better yet, why not make an interagency agreement to take the money, time, and effort budgeted for Canalways Refuge mapping and provide it to the City of San Rafael to have them dredge their silted over Canalways flood control pond. Helping them with that expense would benefit flood control efforts, stop the site from being flooded and thereby protect whatever, if any, SMHM mice live near the pond.
Landowners, true environmentalists, taxpayers and the City’s budget would support such actions. The spoils removed from the pond could be placed on the highlands of Canalways and thereby address the highest goal of the federal government’s recently completed Long-Term Management Strategy (LTMS) for the Placement of Dredged Material in the San Francisco Bay Region calling for the beneficial reuse of dredge spoils.
In fact, I believe the Canalways partnership could help build a community campaign to support you in such efforts. Please let me know how you feel about this idea to partner with your agency in fulfilling the goals of the LTMS, and to create another wildlife wonderland by working together.
Housing, jobs, protecting the environment, endangered
species are all interrelated issues important to the regional ecology. Some of these issues are more important to
some than others. I am not against any
of the components that go into benefiting the region’s total environment. However, in our County some long time myopic
environmental leaders have long acted as though Marin is an island onto
itself. Marin already has 84% of its
land set aside as undevelopable. This
places an almost intolerable burden on the counties ability to provide other
needed requirements such as affordable housing, and retention of it’s economic and
employment base.
The diminution of the wetland, according to a recent
news story I have read, has stopped.
That is no reason to stop your efforts to find more wetlands, but do not
give people the impression that Canalways is a desirable wetlands by placing it
in the Baylands Refuge. Housing, Home
Depot, FedEx, a heliport, offices, Lucas production facilities, an overcrowded
school and lots of kids of mixed races, encircles Canalways.
This is a site that could be a high tech campus mixed
with a substantial amount of environmentally enhanced lands and perhaps a park
and some schooling for kids. We private
landowners could do a better job of benefiting the regional ecology under the
existing plethora of regulatory agencies, plans and pressure groups without
having to deal with the, potential perception, which will be pushed by some
narrow minded proclaimed environmentalists, of Canalways being labeled as a
“refuge.”
Please refer to the true definition of the word “ecology.”
1 : a branch of science concerned with
the interrelationship of organisms and their environments
2 : the totality or pattern of relations between organisms and their
environment
Ecology is not limited to plants and wildlife. It includes humans also. Lets provide for humans lest they become the endangered species.
Again, let me harken
back to the pond as an example. We
owners filled the pond with birds, growing plants, healthy water. We gave it to
the agencies and pressure groups alive and prospering. No governmental agency listed it as a
refuge. No governmental agency used my
tax dollars to study and then engineer the site. We Canalways property owners want to do the same, but on a larger
scale, with Canalways -- without wasting time, energy and money dealing with
perceptions – even if they may be legally and technically mistaken perceptions
-- that come with being labeled as part of the Baylands Refuge.
I am proud of having reinforced the levee, stopped the leachate leakage, and restored a dead pond to life. I am happy that I delivered real environmental benefits to the community that houses my debris box business, which recycles much of what it takes in. I am proud of the many parcels of land that I played a role in developing.
I have long felt that the government that governs effectively with less can often govern best, and I hope that philosophy is be coming through here. In this case, I have had this philosophy reinforced by the experiences many landowners along Highway 37 and Sears Point Raceway have had with “Refuge” terms being used on their lands.
The government engineering that was done on the Tolay Creek project was terrible. The subsequent costly flooding of farmland and homes there only further buttresses my belief that local property owners can better enhance the Canalways environment than can a distant, unattached government agency.
I strongly demand that Canalways be kept out of the Baylands Refuge mapping. I hope your response is that you will honor the property owners’ request and keep us out of the Bayland Refuge without litigation. If that is not your response, please detail in writing why our property rights cannot be so honored. Or why there is no provision for us to simply withdraw.
Let
me assure you that if in the future we feel selling a portion of our land to
the Fish and Wildlife Service or to related agencies would be beneficial to our
project’s development and the region’s environmental betterment, I will
personally contact you.
Thank you,
CC:
Mel Martinez,U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Julie Bornstein, California Department of Housing
Bill Pavao, California Department of Housing
Mike Spear, Regional Director U. S. Fish & Wildlife
Dan Ashe, U. S. Fish & Wildlife, Refuge Director
Congresswoman Woolsey,
Senator Boxer
Senator Feinstein
Supervisor Murray & Marin Board of Supervisors
Bay Planning Coalition
San Rafael Planning Department
Assemblyman Joe Nation
Kerner Partners
G418s