By Peter Jamison
August 11, 2005
The National Park Foundation last week received more than half the money needed to transform 550 acres of Point Reyes Station¹s Giacomini dairy ranch into a saltwater marsh.
The $2.54 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation will be used by the Point Reyes National Seashore to breach dikes and levees, as well as carry out other work, to revive wetlands on the ranch at the foot of Tomales Bay.
The nonprofit National Park Foundation works with the Park Service on projects nationwide.
The Park Service bought the ranch from the Giacomini family five years ago for $5.75 million.
Originally a marsh, the land was bought by the Giacomini family in 1944 when the US wanted to increase wartime milk production. Subsidized by the federal Land Reclamation Act, the family eventually built levees to keep water from Tomales Bay from inundating their pastures at high tide.
The only dairy in West Marin with irrigated pastures, the ranch thrived with cows grazing from Point Reyes Station to Inverness Park.
Cows can stick around for now
Cows still graze in most of the ranch¹s pastures, for the Giacomini family under terms of the sale can continue operations on 463 acres through 2007.
Park officials estimate that $5 million will be needed for the project, with the restored wetlands to be called the "Giacomini Marsh."
When complete, the restoration project will increase coastal wetlands in central California by 12 percent, park officials said. Wetlands ecologist Lorraine Parsons of the Park Service told The Light that restoration should be completed by the end of 2008.
Parsons, who is managing the restoration, said the marsh will serve as an enormous, natural water filter for Tomales Bay.
Two-thirds of Tomales Bay¹s freshwater comes from Olema and Papermill/Lagunitas Creeks, flowing across the Giacomini Ranch, Parsons said. The ranch¹s levees funnel the water (and any bacteria in it) straight into the bay.
A natural filter for toxins and bacteria
But if the creek water is filtered through the restored wetlands, Parsons said, plants will help reduce the amount of bacteria entering the bay.
The faster water flows, the more suspended sediment it can carry. If a marsh can cause the water to spread out, it will slow down, and sediment suspended in it will drop out.
Plants, she said, will help retain silt in the marsh, along with bacteria that binds itself to the sediment. And when the bacteria is absorbed by marsh muck, the nutrient-rich bacteria can help marsh plants grow.
"Wastewater-treatment districts are actually using wetlands for this very property," Parsons said, adding that she does not foresee the Giacomini Marsh becoming a designated wastewater facility.
A draft Environmental Impact Report on the wetlands restoration project should be finished next year, Parsons said.