Paving Paradise Part III: Follow the Politics

The NPS and GGNRA Plan for Muir Woods and Panoramic Highway

A Phoenix Rises

Like the climax of every bad horror movie, just when you’re sure the monster is dead it rises one last time to wreak havoc. The latest 2013 Muir Woods parking and traffic plan by NPS and the GGNRA follows the same storyline.

Whereas the 2003 plan was promoted as a “Vision for the Future of Redwood Creek Watershed,” this time the plan is dryly referred to as a “traffic control” plan that’s required because “marketing studies” have shown that Muir Woods ticket buyers are having a “diminished visitor experience” (ostensibly due to lack of good parking and transportation options). That long term stewardship and preservation should always take precedence over such mundane concerns, notwithstanding, it’s important to put this upside down thinking in context.

As a result of the collapse of 2008, two important things changed. There has been even more pressure from Washington DC to cut costs and increase revenues to cover expenses at our national parks and public lands. And due to the poor economy and the weakness of the dollar, the number of visitors coming to California’s parks and seashores, particularly foreign visitors and Americans having “stay-cations,” has increased significantly. At Muir Woods, since 2005, attendance has increased from almost 4,000 visitors a day to 6,000 a day.

Neither of these trends bodes well for our communities or our precious open space.  But the numbers are hard to ignore if you’re only looking to make more money.

So when the latest NPS parking and “traffic control” proposal resurfaced last month, with an absurdly short public comment period, we shouldn’t have been surprised.

I’m actually not really surprised that the Denver NPS planners don’t “get it” that Marin is a special place that requires a unique perspective to appreciate. But it’s certainly a little surprising that GGNRA superintendents and planners, who’ve been working with NPS Chief Planner, Nancy Horner, from the beginning, have been so quick to strike a deal with the Devil, especially since they know that the new plan contains most of the same ideas from the old plan that were so unequivocally rejected by local stakeholders.

The record shows that the plan presented last month clearly took years of work to produce. As early as 2007, NPS/GGNRA was hiring consultant Nelson/Nygaard to do yet another traffic study about Muir Woods' access options. And by the time it was announced publicly, last month, many more consultant studies had already been completed over a period of more than two years.

However, what is more incredulous is to ask us to believe that our County Supervisors, and in particular Steve Kinsey and Kate Sears, who’ve recently denied special knowledge and claimed to be as surprised as the rest of us, didn’t know this new plan was in the works.

Or did they?

The Plot Thickens

It’s interesting to note that the “public notice” about the recent plan and public comment period seems to have only been posted on the GGNRA web site (a place I’m sure you all frequent regularly). Other than a brief notice in the San Francisco Chronicle it would have been hard for anyone to know what was going on. None of the original stakeholder groups or community representatives, even those from cities or agencies like the Fire Departments, got any direct notice.

In fact some of the people I interviewed to write this piece, who followed this project closely for more than a decade, told me that when they called their city council members in early September to alert them about what was coming, none of their elected officials had heard about it.

Having grown up in New York City, I’m fairly cynical about politicians and their motives. But I had always hoped that somehow, in Marin, where challenges aren’t so overwhelmingly, we might have better chance at transparency. I was wrong.

By the same token, I’ve come to accept that I can count on County Supervisor Kate Sears to go along to get along and generally be asleep at the switch (e.g., Plan Bay Area), so I wouldn’t be surprised if she was genuinely clueless about all this. County Supervisor Steve Kinsey is a different story.

Kinsey has been backpedaling furiously lately, since the protests began as soon as the latest NPS/GGNRA parking lot plan was publicly announced, doing his best to distance himself from it. To date, he’s denied having any real involvement in its creation.

On September 18th, a nonpublic, agency meeting was held from 1:30 to 3:30 P.M. at the Holiday Inn in Tam Junction. NPS presented a slide show about the new plan. A public meeting followed later that afternoon.

An agency meeting is where other public officials whose jurisdictions or subject matter specialties overlap with the purposes and plans of a new project come together to be informed and to comment on issues that the project planners might not have considered. And attendees certainly did comment on the plan’s deficiencies regarding fire safety, habitat preservation, fisheries impacts, emergency vehicle access, and a host of other concerns. But eye witness reports indicate that NPS/GGNRA ran the session more like a debriefing and marketing strategy meeting than a sincere effort to listen and compromise.

Perhaps they were hoping to get everyone’s story straight before the “plan hit the fan.”

And at both meetings, when people challenged the GGNRA’s authority to proceed with the plan as is, Aaron Roth, GGNRA Deputy Superintendent, repeatedly responded by saying, “What? We own the land!” – implying that it’s their land and they can do whatever they please with it.

I know. That’s pretty bizarre statement coming from someone who has been charged with protecting lands held in trust for the public.

But it gets better.

During the agency meeting, when attendees questioned how this proposal could have possibly reached such an advanced stage without any local input or participation, it was reported to me that Aaron Roth, the Deputy Superintendent of GGNRA, and Brian Aviles, the Chief Planner for GGNRA, both stated that this was not true because they “had been working with Supervisor Steve Kinsey on this project for two years and it has his full support.”

The Dénouement – Killing the Host

Throughout this entire decade long ordeal, there has been endless discussion and studies about “capacity:” The capacity of the roads and the buses and shuttles, the capacity of the parking lots and the illegal roadside parking, and the economic and physical capacity of the Park.  And there has been a lot of commentary on traffic and pollution and watershed maintenance and impacts on adjacent communities.

But in all of this, why is it that no one has done an independent study of the environmental capacity of the Muir Woods ecosystem, itself? Why hasn’t any funding been spent to “ask the trees” what they want and need to remain healthy and viable for another 800 years? We don’t even know what kind of damage the present level of visitor traffic is doing to the groves’ long term viability, much less what increased park admissions would do.

None of our government agencies or elected officials has asked this fundamental question. Yet it remains the most important question of all.

I understand that as Americans, we find it hard to tolerate the concept of limits. Everything in our culture from our schooling to 24/7 advertising messages brainwashes us to believe there are no limits to anything. The idea that we should accept that there are real limits to what any given ecosystem can bear, before it’s irretrievably altered, doesn’t enter into the equation. Ecosystems are taken for granted. And the only solutions we allow ourselves to consider are how to do it “smarter” or better:  how to create better public access and more parking.

But we live with a false sense of security.

I’m sorry but everyone who wants to see Muir Woods in their lifetime may not get that chance. Tough luck, but I may never get to see Machu Picchu, either. Our inability to accept the concept of limits risks killing the goose that laid the golden egg. No amount of “planning,” or strategically designed parking facilities, or any carefully crafted reservation system will change that fact.

At the September 18th meeting, GGNRA Deputy Superintendent, Aaron Roth, stated at that Muir Woods “visitation levels are well beyond what the environment and the Muir Woods infrastructure can sustain.”

This is becoming true for all the GGNRA open lands in Marin.

It simply makes no sense at all to bring more and more traffic onto Highway 1 or up through Mill Valley streets to the top of Panoramic to park your car. It makes no sense to plan for gigantic touring buses to transport people from Diaz Ridge down a windy canyon road to Muir woods.

Even a child could figure out that cars and trucks need to park outside of public lands, as they do now at Manzanita, and be taken in small shuttle buses (hopefully fully electric and non-polluting ones) up to Muir Woods. And it’s glaringly obvious that places like the Manzanita parking area could be improved to handle any needed capacity for a fraction of the cost of what NPS will spend to build a new facility on top of the ridge.

Yet on all these points our elected representatives, and particularly County Supervisors Kinsey and Sears, have been silent. I actually doubt these questions have ever even crossed their minds.

While I was interviewing one of the long time participants in the public advisory process, he commented that, “The thing I don’t get is why Kinsey would care so much about currying favor with the NPS and GGNRA at the expense of the people of Marin? I just don’t get why he did that.”  He felt betrayed because our elected leaders have failed to stand up against powerful appointee and staff interests in big government agencies run by unelected officials who have no interest in local input whatsoever.

His implication was that it didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess that the people of Marin would be united in opposition to this plan, just as they had been to the earlier version. So why was Kinsey working with the NPS and GGNRA for more than two years, on a plan that was sure to meet with massive opposition? And if Kinsey knew about this plan, it’s hard to believe that the other supervisors didn’t also know about it.

I realize I'm old fashioned. But I actually still believe the elected representatives should work to represent everyone in their district, not just those who voted for them, not just those they want to vote for them, and not just those they are looking to for their next appointment to yet another powerful position.

But my response to his question was, I don’t know. However, it’s a question that Steve Kinsey and Kate Sears, and the other County Supervisors owe the people of Marin an answer to.

Steve Kinsey opened the meeting on September 18th by saying, "We are all partners in this, the County, NPS and California State Parks."

It makes me wonder, when he used the word “we,” was he talking about you and me?

I have no doubt that the County and NPS and the GGNRA are all “in this” together.  I’m just worried about the rest of us.

READ "PAVING PARADISE PART II" AT:

http://millvalley.patch.com/groups/bob-silvestris-blog/p/paving-paradise-part-ii-follow-the-money

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WRITE THE NPS/GGNRA:

Send letters commenting on the NPS/GGNRA proposal to: GGNRA, Attn: Muir Woods Transportation Projects, Fort Mason, Building 201, San Francisco 94123.

Or email letters to the Mt Tam Taskforce at info@mounttamtaskforce.com and they will forward them to the NPS when the government reopens.

For more information and updates, please go to the Mt. Tam Taskforce web site at: http://www.mounttamtaskforce.com/

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Bob Silvestri is the founder of Environmental Media Fund, author of “The Best Laid Plans: Our Planning and Affordable Housing Challenges in Marin,” and recently became president of Community Venture Partners, a not for profit organization working to facilitate housing, planning and socially equitable development solutions through public education, research and community based programs, and by providing technical and financial assistance for projects, programs and organizations that demonstrate the highest principles of economic, social and environmental sustainability.