By Bob Norberg
Sunday,
August 7, 2005
A controversial proposal to build a ferry terminal at Port Sonoma, which received $20 million in the latest round of federal transportation funding, has further clouded the future of a commuter rail line between Sonoma and Marin counties.
Ferry advocates say a terminal at the bayside marina would give riders easy access to ferries going to San Francisco, giving the train that critics have derided as stopping short of the ferry terminal in Larkspur a place to go.
"You could get on the train in Cloverdale, or wherever they start it, and it is seamless to go to Port Sonoma and to San Francisco," said Jim Harberson, a former Sonoma County supervisor who is a consultant for Port Sonoma. "It will give people another option."
Both taxpayer and environmental critics, however, say the ferry terminal, to be built and operated by a private company, faces insurmountable obstacles.
"A ferry terminal is a worse idea than a train," said Joy Dahlgren, of Citizens Opposed to the SMART Train Tax.
The group still opposes a quarter-cent sales tax for commute trains, which Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit plans to put before voters of both counties in November 2006.
The proposed site is located on an environmentally sensitive wetlands area that is home to the California Clapper Rail and Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse, both of which are on the federal list of endangered species.
The ferry proposal "is grossly negligent of the environmental impacts," said Phil Peterson, co-chairman of the Marin Audubon Society. "I don't object to ferry service in the right place. But most of our battles are the right project in the wrong place."
For its part, Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit, dubbed SMART, is trying to stay clear of the fray. Officials say they have proposed running trains from Cloverdale to Larkspur, and Port Sonoma was purposefully left out because of the environmental problems.
"Nobody at SMART has proposed a Port Sonoma train," said Lillian Hames, project director. "It is not in our project description; it is not in our environmental documents."
Port Sonoma is owned by an investment group headed by Skip Berg of Berg Holdings in Sausalito. A year ago, Berg Holdings started a new company, North Bay Ferry Service, to operate ferries from Port Sonoma to both San Francisco and Oakland.
As federal legislators were putting the final touches on a $286.5 billion transportation package last week, $20 million was added at the last minute and designated for Berg's Port Sonoma ferry company.
J.T. Wick, an associate of Berg's who is overseeing the Port Sonoma proposal, said he and Santa Rosa attorney Doug Bosco, a former congressman who supports Highway 101 and mass transit improvements, worked the halls of Congress rounding up support.
No Congress member, including Sonoma County's representatives, has acknowledged writing the $20 million allocation into the legislation. Supporters of the project believe it was added by Rep. Don Young, an Alaskan Republican who was chairman of the transportation committee. Aides in Young's Washington office would not comment.
Wick said that a ferry terminal at Port Sonoma would provide a transit link that could serve ferries, buses and the commuter train.
"We would have a ferry service that links the rail to the rest of the Bay Area, it makes a regional transit link that it doesn't have now," Wick said.
"There is enormous opportunity here. It will benefit the rail, and the rail will benefit the ferry. They are incredibly complementary."
Still, the allocation surprised transportation officials at SMART; Golden Gate Transit District, which already operates ferries; and the regional planning agency San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority, which oversees ferry service.
Representatives at those agencies said they had no idea the proposal was in the works and questioned why money was going to a private company rather than a public agency.
Similarly, the funding caught Democrats Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, whose districts include the port, by surprise.
Woolsey said last week that while she supported the ferry proposal and voted for the legislation, she did not insert the language into the bill and does not know who did.
Boxer aide David Sandretti said, "This port was not on our list."
"We had been working up to the last hour to get priorities funded, and this was not one of them," Sandretti said. "The priorities were widening the Highway 101 Narrows and funding for compressed natural gas buses for Sonoma County."
The money will flow through the federal Highway Administration to the California Department of Transportation, but the exact mechanism is still being worked out, according to administration spokesman Doug Hecox.
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