Skaggs Island puzzle fitting together

By Emily Setzer Index-Tribune Intern

07.15.05 - For tidal restoration around the North Bay, the addition of Skaggs Island to the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge is the final piece to the puzzling legalities regarding the transfer of the land to a federal or state agency.

"A lot of groups in the Bay Area want to see this land protected, and we're slowly finding the appropriate agency to manage it and work through the legal issues," said Christy Smith, manager of the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

The Navy currently owns the 4,400-acre island, which contains an abandoned Navy communications station and an 1,100-acre hay farm leased to the Haire family.

The inclusion of the island would increase the refuge's size from 13,190 to 16,490 acres.

The original plan called for the Navy to transfer the land to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the bordering San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

However, the Navy insisted that if the land were transferred to another federal agency, such as the Wildlife Service, federal laws would require the service to be responsible for any future discovery of contaminants or necessary environmental cleanup.

The Wildlife Service wouldn't agree to the transfer on those terms, causing the project to be put on hold at the federal level for years.

"No one expects there to be any contamination that hasn't already been detected and cleaned up. Since it was never an industrial site, the contamination to date includes asbestos in construction material and casings for communication wires that the Navy has already cleaned up," said Marc Holmes, a restoration manager for the Bay Institute, a nonprofit that works on restoring the Bay and the Delta.

In fact, the Navy only used 65 acres of the property, with the rest occupied by the hay farm.

Even though the Navy's already done quite a bit of cleanup, what may be found in the future is simply unknown. "That's the scary part," said Smith.

Current plans call for the Navy to transfer the land to the California Department of Fish and Game. By giving it to the state, federal laws regarding the cleanup responsibilities would not apply to the new owner, and the Navy would maintain liability.

The San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge is working on a memorandum of understanding, under which the Department of Fish and Game would own the land and the Fish and Wildlife Service would manage it.

"(It's) a somewhat innovative solution to get around this technical problem of liability," said Holmes.

According to an agreement made more than 50 years ago when the Navy acquired the land from M.B. Skaggs, any new owners must agree to maintain the flood-control pumps and levies around the Haire property to keep it dry.

The Wildlife Conservation Board, which consists of Fish and Game officials and Senate and Assembly members, states that almost 90 percent of the original tidal wetlands of the San Francisco Bay Area were destroyed by diking, filling or draining the land to separate it from Bay waters, most often to create farmland. The Sonoma and Napa marshes surrounding the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge used to be one of the most extensive wetland systems on the Pacific Coast.

"The loss of tidal wetland has greatly reduced the amount of habitat available to many species of fish and wildlife," asserted the Wildlife Conservation Board.

"Skaggs Island is the single most significant diked wetland in the North Bay," said Holmes.

There is no definitive timeline for this project that has been in the works for more than 10 years, but Holmes hopes that negotiations will conclude this year.

"(This) restoration will benefit wildlife, water quality and protect the natural environment of Sonoma County for future generations. Even though there are final details to work out, I am confident that with the current level of state-federal cooperation, we will succeed," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma.

http://www.sonomanews.com/articles/2005/07/15/news/top_stories/news04.txt