A fishing boat rests on a sand bar in Bolinas Lagoon. (IJ photo/Alan Dep)

PHOTOGRAPHS ON the walls of the Bolinas Rod & Boat Club reflect the Bolinas Lagoon of a century ago, with water deep enough to serve as safe harbor for two-masted sailing ships filled with passengers, freight and mail.

Today, the shallow-draft Boston Whalers used by many Bolinas fishermen are stranded on mudflats at low tide and have difficulty navigating the sand bars that clog the narrow channel leading to the Pacific.

"It's all mud, all silt," said Tim Cowman, who has fished the region for 30 years.

Experts say the lagoon, if left untouched, will become a marsh.

But partisans on all sides of the issue disagree on what, if anything, should be done.

Marin County supervisors are hoping experts from the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary will be able to do what no one has been able to accomplish in more than a decade: convince those concerned about the Bolinas Lagoon to agree on a master plan.

The county wants the federal sanctuary to hammer out a compromise between boaters, fishermen and property owners who want to dredge all or part of the lagoon, and the environmental groups and others who believe it ought to be allowed to evolve into a shallow marsh.

"They've been involved with the project from the beginning," said Ron Miska, deputy director of the county Department of Parks and Open Space, regarding the Gulf of the Farallones sanctuary. "We want them to engage more fully, take the lead on the project, break the impasse related to what should be done."

Most factions embrace the federal sanctuary's involvement.

Josh Churchman carries oars as he walks on the dock at the Bolinas Rod & Boat Club at the Bolinas Lagoon. Churchman, who has lived in Bolinas 51 years, is concerned about the lagoon, which is filling with silt. (IJ photo/Alan Dep)

"It's a good development, having the Gulf of the Farallones in an active role," said Maurice "Skip" Schwartz, executive director of Audubon Canyon Ranch, a 100-acre wildlife preserve and education center near the shores of the lagoon. "They bring their expertise, their experience, their staff and their resolve to the question."

Some, however, have doubted whether sanctuary officials will be able to broker a deal.

"I wish them the best of luck," said commercial fisherman Josh Churchman, who has lived in the area 51 years, launching from the lagoon as he seeks salmon, rockfish and halibut in the Pacific. "Personally, I have little faith that they'll ever get everyone on the same page."

The one issue on which everyone can agree is that the Bolinas Lagoon - the tidal estuary that separates the towns of Bolinas and Stinson Beach - is getting shallower as it fills with silt.

That's a problem for the birds and fish using the lagoon as a nursery, as well as the harbor seals who come to raise pups every spring and summer.

"The reason why the Bolinas Lagoon was designated a wetland of international significance by UNESCO is that it supports a diversity of wildlife," said Maria Brown, sanctuary manager for the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. "It's an important stopover location for migratory waterfowl. It has a large number of shorebirds and is important breeding habitat for egrets. It also supports a healthy harbor seal population. There are concerns about losing its eel grass, which is threatened worldwide and is a very important habitat for invertebrate species."

It's also a concern for those who have lived in Bolinas and Stinson Beach for generations and see the lagoon as the center of their communities.

"In my 10 years as supervisor, I think this is the only issue on which Stinson Beach and Bolinas appear to be in harmony," Supervisor Steve Kinsey said.

In 1996, the county Department of Parks and Open Space said what many fishermen, boaters and other residents had long suspected: The tidal prism, or amount of water flowing in and out of the lagoon, had declined by 25 percent between 1968 and 1988. The announcement sparked a study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which concluded in 1997 that there was a national interest in dredging the lagoon.

That decision drew strong criticism from many residents and environmental groups, who felt a large-scale engineering project could damage the lagoon's fragile ecosystem and make it more vulnerable to invasion by non-native species.

"This was a very expensive project that had no chance of working," said Gordon Bennett, a member of the Sierra Club's Marin Group. "From a taxpayer's perspective, it was incredibly foolish. From an ecological perspective, it would have destroyed wetlands critically important to endangered species, such as the black rail. Other species might have benefited from deeper water, but not those that were endangered. And there was quite a bit of concern about a significant amount of dredging opening the door to invasive species, which like a disturbed habitat."

Other critics felt the dredging project would mainly benefit the owners of waterfront properties, such as those in the exclusive Seadrift development, even though the Army did not include the man-made Seadrift lagoon in its dredging proposal.

"There was concern that the lagoon was being dredged for yachting, although there really aren't any yachts there," Kinsey said.

Even those who supported the idea of dredging expressed concern about the cost, length and effects of the project, Miska said.

"Dredging would have taken place in multiple areas of the lagoon, and would have to take place during a certain window of late summer and early fall, related to seals and their pupping," the open space official said. "This would occur for more than seven years. There were ecological concerns about the benthos, the mud and silt at the bottom, which includes a lot of the food chain. There were concerns about the disposal of the dredge material. And there were concerns about the costs. At first, the cost was estimated about $5 million to $20 million.

"By the time the later study was released, it was over $100 million."

Critics argued that dredging the lagoon wouldn't address what many assumed was the source of the silt that filled it - development and other human activity surrounding the water for more than 100 years.

"People assumed the bulk of the rise in sediment came from man-made problems, such as the alteration of the creek, the building of the Seadrift development and early logging," said Bill Chayes, an independent filmmaker who has spent the past four years working on a documentary about the lagoon debate.

The Army Corps of Engineers put its proposed dredging project on hold in 2002, while the county commissioned contractor Philip Williams and Associates, a San Francisco hydrology firm, to determine why the lagoon was filling with silt. The results, released in 2005, came as a surprise to many.

"A lot of the studies of the lagoon assumed that the watershed was the source of sediment," Miska said. "People thought the sediment came from the grazing, the fires, the clearing and the logging that had occurred. Our study found that most of the sediment came from outside the lagoon, from the ocean rather than the watershed."

The Williams study indicated that Bolinas Lagoon, which sits atop the San Andreas and San Gregorio faults, has become deeper and shallower over the centuries as a result of earthquakes. The Bay Area's 1906 earthquake made what had been a shallow lagoon much deeper. But it also demolished the Bolinas bluffs, sending their sands into the water and starting the cycle of filling in the lagoon over again.

"This is a lagoon that's trending toward a shallow lagoon, which is what estuaries do," Schwartz said. "The regeneration point is a quake, which you can't predict."

The study contradicted the Army report, suggesting the lagoon had stabilized and was unlikely to fill in completely during the next 50 years.

The results of the study bolstered the arguments of environmental groups, which had suggested that the lagoon's filling with sediment was a natural process. Many residents, however, rejected the study's claims, saying the evidence of their own eyes told them the lagoon was on the verge of being cut off from the sea.

"It can close off from the ocean with one big winter storm," Churchman said. "All it would take is a week of sustained 50-knot winds and a 20-foot northwest swell, which is not impossible, and it could close off this winter.

"Science says all we need is a significant seismic event. That's absurd, that we're all hoping for a significant seismic event. A significant seismic event will fix a few more things than this problem with the lagoon, let me tell you."

Filmmaker Chayes said he doesn't believe science can settle what is essentially a difference of opinion.

"There's been a lot of clash between anecdotal evidence from long-time residents and the scientific findings from a number of different sources," Chayes said. "That's not necessarily going to change their minds."

That division could spell doom for agreement on any large-scale dredging project. But a smaller-scale project, removing some materials from the lagoon and analyzing the effect, could find support from all sides, Supervisor Kinsey believes.

"Funding is unlikely for any large-scale dredging activity," Kinsey said. "But dredging could take place at the south end of the lagoon, where historically some fills have occurred. There's also a shipwrecked dredge that could be fished out of the muck."

That ship, a dredge used to clear Seadrift Lagoon that became stuck in the Bolinas mud, has loomed out of the lagoon's waters like a rusted skeleton since 1962. By removing the wreck and measuring how quickly the hole fills with sediment, researchers might be better able to predict the future of the lagoon, Churchman said.

"People are afraid of the job the Army Corps of Engineers would do, that they would make a big mess," Churchman said. "They're in favor of slower adaptive management, doing a little bit at a time. Remove the (shipwrecked) dredge and look at the hole in the bank. That's what's most favorable to be adopted by the community, and that's what we're hoping for."

The Sierra Club's Bennett agrees.

"If (the wreck) is taken out, it would be a good test site to look at how quickly it fills in and how much it is occupied by invasive species," Bennett said. "Areas along the bay where Caltrans and property owners pushed artificial fill into the lagoon before it was illegal could be excavated. And we'd be open to considering the possibility of dredging out the back channel behind Kent Island, allowing Pine Gulch Creek a more direct route to the ocean.

"There probably are some modest projects that can and should be done," Bennett said. "Our opposition is to the massive dredging project proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers."

Ultimately, the Army Corps will decide what project, if any, it wants to support for the Bolinas Lagoon. County officials are concerned that Congress has not placed funding for the project in the 2008 federal budget.

During the next six months, however, the Gulf of the Farallones Marine Sanctuary plans to convene a "Bolinas Lagoon Restoration Working Group" that will develop a "preferred plan" for the area. The group plans to hold its first meeting in September.

"Instead of addressing 'do we dredge or not,' what we will be proposing is making our goal the health of the lagoon," said Brown, the Farallones sanctuary official. "I think the majority of people, if you asked everyone, would say yes, we want to see a healthy lagoon. Then the only question is what makes a healthy, thriving lagoon.

"If we have a common goal, a common purpose, we should be able to define common ground."

Reaching that common ground won't be easy or quick, said Audubon Canyon Ranch's Schwartz.

"In thinking about what to do with this asset, the public process should be slow," Schwartz said. "Adaptive management is a messy process. It doesn't call for a simple engineering solution, just moving 2 million cubic yards from here to there. There's a lot at stake."

Churchman said he plans to see the process through to completion.

"Bolinas and Stinson are frustrated, because people have talked about it for so long," Churchman said. "It's reached the point of being like the Iraq War: It's happening every day, but it's not part of most people's reality, because it's not something they see every day. I keep at it because of the next generation.

"Somebody has to be an advocate for the fish," Churchman added. "I'm not giving up yet."

TIMELINE

- 1854: Logging, other activities add sediment to already-shallow lagoon.

- 1906: Earthquake makes lagoon deeper, but collapses Bolinas Bluffs, beginning latest sedimentation cycle.

- 1961: Marin Audubon Society board approves $337,000 purchase of the Canyon Ranch on Bolinas Lagoon.

- 1962: Dredge used to excavate Seadrift Lagoon becomes stuck in Bolinas Lagoon, later burns. Efforts to remove the hulk are fruitless.

- 1964: Bahia Baulines Inc., which leased 100 acres of submerged tidal land from the Bolinas Harbor District for 50 years, proposes development of Kent Island in the lagoon, and a 1,500-boat marina and boat facility, restaurant and hotel.

- 1967: Environmental groups quietly purchase 110-acre Kent Island with the help of a Nature Conservancy loan and give the island to the county, stipulating it be retained as a nature preserve. The move torpedoes the lagoon development plan, and the harbor district is dissolved.

- 1981: Bolinas Lagoon becomes part of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.

- 1994: Committee to Save Bolinas Lagoon forms.

- 1996: County announces Bolinas Lagoon lost 25 percent of its tidal basin between 1968 and 1988.

- 1997: Army Corps of Engineers study concludes dredging lagoon is a matter of national interest.

- 1998: Supervisors agree to a further $1.7 million Army Corps of Engineers study of lagoon. UNESCO declares Bolinas Lagoon one of only 17 Wetlands of International Importance in the United States.

- 2000: Sand bar forms across lagoon access channel.

- 2002: Army Corps releases study recommending dredging 1.4 million cubic yards from the lagoon. Cost estimated at $60 million. County hires consultant to predict lagoon's evolution over next 50 years.

- 2005: Consultant Phillip Williams Associates says lagoon sediment comes from bluff sands and ocean currents; predicts lagoon will not fill completely during next 50 years.

- 2007: County partners with Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary to develop locally preferred plan for lagoon management.

MORE INFORMATION

- Meeting: A Bolinas Lagoon Restoration Working Group will hold its first public meeting in September, at a time and place to be announced. In addition, the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council will hold a retreat in Bolinas on Oct. 11. The council is seeking new members who represent public interest groups, local industry, commercial and recreational user groups, academia, conservation groups, government agencies, and the general public. Members serve either two-or three-year terms.

- On the Net: For more information, visit the Gulf of the Farallones Web site at http://farallones.noaa.gov, or the county's Bolinas Lagoon Restoration Project Web site at www.co.marin.ca.us/depts/PK/Main/mcosd/os_bolinaslagoonmgtplan.asp.

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Contact Rob Rogers via e-mail at rrogers@marinij.com