By Elizabeth Hall & Andrea Montalbano
In an exciting update to Susan Hopp’s Fall 2021 Yodeler article, potential damage to the biologically rich watershed of Mount Tamalpais has been stopped — for now. As you may remember, the Watershed Alliance of Marin (WAM) and Friends of Muir Woods Park filed a lawsuit against the proposed “Dipsea Ranch” development, which had been approved without a full Environmental Impact Report (EIR). The project could cause irreparable harm to the watershed habitat surrounding Redwood Creek, home to 97 endangered, protected, or threatened species, including coho salmon, spotted owls, red-legged frogs, and marbled murrelets.
But, on January 10th, Judge Andrew Sweet of the Marin County Superior Court ruled in favor of our partners, overturning Marin County’s approval of the Dipsea Ranch homes subdivision. The judge found that the County’s Initial Study and Mitigated Negative Declaration (IS/MND), shorter and less detailed than an EIR, failed to meet the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by ignoring crucial threats to the fragile Redwood Creek ecosystem. In particular, the development could cause sediment to spill downstream into the creek, smothering critical spawning habitat for coho salmon. The Court also found that the study failed to adequately address that drainage from the proposed subdivision would run directly through a wetland conservation area.
It should be noted that the Court only invalidated the prior approvals and did not order for a full EIR to be prepared — leaving the County to once again decide what level of environmental assessment be conducted if the developer were to pursue the project further. Still, the Sierra Club Marin Group and our partners applaud the Court’s ruling and urge the County to follow all CEQA environmental assessment requirements in order to prevent further damage to the rich ecosystems of Mt. Tamalpais, Muir Woods, and Redwood Creek.
Laura Chariton, founder of WAM stated, “With environmental degradation and devastation so prevalent in the news today, the County Supervisors and Planning Commission should not sidestep environmental considerations but should put them at the forefront of their concerns about the future.”
Elizabeth Hall is the communications assistant for the Sierra Club SF Bay Chapter. Andrea Montalbano, a neighborhood resident and member of Friends of Muir Woods Park, provided contributions to this article.
Photo credit: Redwood Creek in Muir Woods by Decaseconds via Flickr Creative Commons (CC BY-NC 2.0).