Staff Report,
Marin Independent Journal
Monday, August 15, 2005
HIDDEN IN A quiet, peaceful corner of northeastern Marin is a mess.
The mess is called Bahia. It is a small Novato neighborhood of about 300 houses, nestled along the shore of the Petaluma River.
When the neighborhood was built in the 1960s, about 80 of the homes were on the water - a lagoon connected to the Petaluma River, offering quick access to San Francisco Bay.
Boats dotted the lagoon's surface, moored to the docks that led to decks and back doors. "It was like living at a resort," one resident said.
Today, there is no water in the lagoon, which is filled with silt. The lagoon has not been dredged for nearly 20 years.
How this came to be is a long and tangled tale involving lawsuits, court rulings, state and federal agencies, environmentalists, endangered birds, developers, Novato city elections and a whole lot of bad feelings.
But the past doesn't really matter, because it can't be changed. Bahia's lagoon is high and dry. That's the reality, and it may become a permanent fact.
Bahia's homeowners are waiting for a final decision from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on allowing dredging. Fish and Wildlife officials are on record as saying they are leaning toward denying a dredging permit. They apparently agree with local environmentalists, who argue that dredging will destroy wetlands habitat that is home to the endangered clapper rail, a bird that lives in salt marshes.
While they wait, estimates of what it would cost to dredge the lagoon and build a lock to stop silt from entering continue to escalate. The price tag is now approaching $17 million.
Bahia has a homeowners association that collects dues, and the association would pay to dredge the lagoon. If the dredging plan moves forward - and the odds seem against it - it would cost each homeowner nearly $60,000, assuming they shared the cost equally (which they wouldn't; "on-the-water" homeowners would pay more than those who own "off-the-water" houses).
For more than 15 years, Bahia's property owners have fought with government agencies, the courts, environmentalists and each other to get their lagoon restored.
But now it is looking like the cause of the whole problem - nature - is likely to win. Nature filled in the lagoon. Nature sent clapper rails to nest in the marsh it created. And now nature is making it increasingly expensive to undo its handiwork.
Nature is a tough foe. Nature is patient, and in the end, it always wins.