Update: The California Coastal Commission (CCC) held a lengthy hearing on July 13, 2011, in the Marin County Board of Supervisors’ chambers to consider a Coastal Development Permit for Lawson’s Landing at Dillon Beach, and concluded by approving development that reduces future camping and also provides for long term protection to the ecologically-rich Tomales Dunes Complex.

Lawson’s Landing is a 75-acre coastal recreational campground within the Tomales Dunes Complex at the mouth of Tomales Bay, opposite the northerly tip of Pt. Reyes National Seashore.  The Dunes Complex occupies a major portion of the 960-acre agricultural parcel that has been owned by the Lawson family since the 1920s.  The Dunes harbor unique and rare species of plants and wildlife, including the endangered snowy plover and threatened California red-legged frog, and is a rich treasure among the few remaining native coastal dune habitats of California.

The campground has a long history of unpermitted development that began in the early 1960s and expanded over the years to accommodate up to 1,000 camping vehicles at peak times, 200 day use vehicles, and 213 permanent travel trailers on the site, some of them more than 50 years old and no longer travel-worthy.  Over the years, the travel trailers have become surrounded by fencing, decks, sheds, gardens, and other accessory structures, forming a loose quasi-residential compound on the shores of Tomales Bay.  (One trailer owner likened the community to a page out of a John Steinbeck novel.)

According to the CCC staff report, even though unpermitted, the campground has provided significant lower cost visitor-serving camping and recreational opportunities to the public.  At the same time, years of artificial draining of wetlands, primitive septic waste systems, and unregulated use by RVs and camping activities have damaged dune and wetland habitats and continue to threaten the environmental quality of Tomales Bay.

The County of Marin approved a Master Plan for Lawson’s Landing in 2008 after more than a decade of debate over environmental issues centering on the need for a Plan that would set limits to camping and provide long term protections for the dunes and wetlands and their rare plant and animal species.  The County’s action was based on an Environmental Impact Report and many other studies conducted over the years.

Many people were concerned that the County’s approval did not ensure adequate long-term protection and, as a consequence, the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin (EAC), led by Catherine Caufield, former EAC Executive Director, and several others appealed the case to the California Coastal Commission (CCC), in whose jurisdiction Lawson’s Landing lies.  MCL and other environmental organizations supported the appeal, and for the past three years the case has been under study by the CCC staff.  In the interim, the Lawsons’ consultant team made considerable progress in revising their earlier development proposal, and they were successful in obtaining agreement from the Natural Resources Conservation Service to purchase a 465-acre easement over roughly half of the property amounting to some $5 million dollars. The revised plan also incorporated protections for habitat for the threatened California red-legged frog, which breeds on the property. The Coastal Commission’s July 13 hearing marked a major step in moving numerous environmental issues toward solution, but not without some compromises to habitat protection and with an understanding that Lawson’s Landing, as it has been known to several generations of campers, will undergo profound change in its character over the next three to five years.

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What did the Coastal Commission approve?

The Coastal Commission staff established two important assumptions that drove their analysis of what the site could accommodate:  (1) the entire area, although degraded through recreational and agricultural use, qualifies as an Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area (ESHA), which strictly limits the kind of development that can occur; and (2 because most of existing development was never permitted, the development plan would be considered as though it were “new.”  Further, the staff had to balance two core policies of the Coastal Act that call for protecting coastal natural resources, and for providing for low-cost recreational access to the coast.  Given the conflict between the two in this instance, the CCC staff developed a set of conditions that sought a solution that could fulfill the competing benefits with maximum protection of natural resources.

In reviewing the Coastal Commission’s action on July 13, Catherine Caufield summarized the approvals as follows:

•             allows camping on only 18 acres of sensitive habitat (an 80% reduction over 1998), but permits camping sufficient to accommodate most peak weekends

•             mandates 100 foot wetland buffers and 50 foot dune scrub buffers

•             requires restoration of the natural wetland hydrology, except for camping areas

•             requires removal of several roads through wetlands

•             eliminates the private travel trailers and opens all camping to public access

•             requires installation of a new septic system but moves the leachfield out of sensitive habitat

•             does not allow sand quarrying and restricts grazing in wetlands

•             puts 465 acres under a permanent conservation easement, to be purchased from the Lawsons by the federal  Natural Resource Conservation Service for around $5 million dollars, to fund long-term restoration and management of habitats

•             establishes a Protection, Restoration, and Enhancement Plan (PREP), the goal of which is to restore and enhance the dunes-wetland complex by restoring natural hydrology of wetland,  protecting listed species, preventing spread of invasive species, planting native species to create habitat for Myrtle's silverspot butterfly, etc.

•             protects the California red-legged frog by removing camping from its habitat and protecting migration corridors

•             protects the snowy plover habitat by restricting access to major portions of the beach

•             has a traffic plan that sets standards for traffic flow and safety and provides for additional measures if those standards are not met

•             requires undergrounding of utilities

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• July 8, 2011, Letter to California Coastal Commission re. the Lawson's Landing permit application
• April 8, 2011,  Email to the California Coastal Commission:

On behalf of Marin Conservation League, I would like to support scheduling the hearing on Lawsons Landing before the Coastal Commission in July rather than at an earlier date.  This will allow the applicant time to work out details of a conservation easement currently being negotiated between Lawsons Landing and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).  We look forward to corresponding further with Commission staff in advance of the July hearing.

Sincerely, Nona Dennis, President

2010 Documents and Correspondence

• December 1, 2010, MCL letter to California Coastal Commission in response to the updated permit application
• July 2, 2010, MCL Letter to California Coastal Commission
• April 26, 2010, Joint Letter to Sonoma County Transportation Authority

• November 8, 2008, MCL Comments on the Lawson's Landing Master Plan
• August 27, 2008, MCL Comments on the Lawson's Landing Master Plan
• July 24, 2008, MCL Comments on the Lawson's Landing Adaptive Plan
• January 25, 2008, MCL Comments on the Lawson's Landing Final EIR

• October 19, 2007, MCL Comments on the Lawson's Landing Master Plan