Efforts to Clear Lagoon Stymied

When Walter Bagley stands on his deck overlooking the Bahia Lagoon, he sees his crumbling boat dock immersed in thick, gooey mud.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Bagley, 46, envisioned taking his motorboat from the lagoon to the nearby Petaluma River when he bought his home 12 years ago. But he and 85 neighbors who live on the man-made waterway have been landlocked since it silted up about 10 years ago.

As a group of residents waged a legal battle to force the homeowners association to dredge, and the association’s efforts to obtain permits dragged on for years, the cordgrass grew tall and the tidal lagoon turned into a marsh. Then, an endangered bird, the California clapper rail, moved in, threatening the dredging and a lock project.

This was the scenario before Marin County Superior Court Judge Michael Dufficy last week at a packed hearing.

Ultimately, he sided with residents who want to elect a new homeowners association board to replace the one that disbanded years ago. He set a special meeting for next month for candidates to step forward.

A new board for the 288-home Bahia neighborhood would end duties for Marshall Levy, appointed eight years ago to handle the homeowners association’s affairs after the earlier board dissolved.

Levy has been working to carry out a court order that required the dredging project, which also includes a lock to prevent the lagoon from becoming too filled with silt.

The issue has been so contentious that Dufficy appointed a special master to handle the election and forbade Levy from participating in the process.

In the meantime, however, Dufficy had agreed that Levy could hire an Oakland land-planning and restoration firm, Zentner and Zentner, for about $25,000 to survey the clapper rail population in the Bahia and southern Petaluma River area.

Levy and Stephen Fraser, the attorney representing the homeowners association, contend that a previous survey for the Marin Audubon Society was flawed and incomplete. That study, done last March, found between eight and 12 clapper rails in the Bahia area, which it said had the largest concentration of the endangered bird in the North Bay.

Levy said a new study is necessary because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is relying on the Audubon survey. Fish and Wildlife has been asked by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to prepare a biological opinion, which could prevent the dredging.

Levy said a Fish and Wildlife official told him in July that he planned to write a “jeopardy” opinion, which would require the federal agency to come up with alternatives to the dredging.

The agency, however, has yet to issue its findings, which has frustrated some residents as well as Dufficy, who criticized the agency for its “bureaucratic stonewall.”

Wayne White, field supervisor for Fish and Wildlife, said the opinion would be out within a month, but conceded it was overdue.

He said the agency hadn’t decided yet whether to issue a jeopardy opinion. Issuing such an opinion would mean that Fish and Wildlife thought the clapper rail’s numbers would decrease were the dredging allowed, White said.

One possible alternative to dredging would be the creation of a marina at a second lagoon in the Bahia development that has not silted in, but that idea is not supported by homeowners, White said.

Although Bahia, built in the 1960s, was planned for 2,500 homes, only 288 were built. A Novato referendum for 424 more homes in Bahia was overwhelmingly rejected two years ago.

Last year, the developer whose project was defeated sold 632 acres of Bahia land for $15.8 million to the Marin Audubon Society. The group distributed most of the land to governmental agencies to be restored, but kept 61 acres to maintain a say in what happens in Bahia.

Barbara Salzman, society president, opposes dredging the lagoon. “It’s a bad project environmentally. It would destroy endangered species habitat,” she said.

“What people forget is it was marsh before they dredged to make it a lagoon,” Salzman added.

Meanwhile, Bahia residents have mixed feelings about the dredging.

Lynn Emrich, a Bahia resident for 20 years who doesn’t live on the lagoon, thinks the dredging project is unlikely to win permits and is too expensive to pursue.

She said that Levy has spent about $4 million so far on the project and that now the association is $350,000 in the red. Levy said he’s spent about $3.5 million, which he contends is not out of line with other Bay Area dredging projects ranging in cost from $2.9 million to $14 million.

But Bagley wants to move forward with dredging.

He opposes building a marina at the other Bahia lagoon because he thinks security and maintenance costs would be too high. Besides, he said, there’s another marina close by -- Port Sonoma -- where he and others found berths once the lagoon silted in.

And anyway, he said, a marina isn’t the same as a boat dock behind his house.

“All we want is what we bought,” Bagley said. “We want it restored to the way the area was designed. It was a man-made lagoon. It wasn’t a wetland.”