California Coastal Commission staff have rejected a preliminary tack by Marin County planners to resolve an impasse over rules on environmental hazards.

The adoption of new policies has proved controversial because they might entail costly mandates for changes to prepare for sea-level rise.

The Marin County Planning Commission met on March 4 to discuss proposed changes to the environmental hazards provisions in the county’s Local Coastal Program (LCP). The program, the general plan that governs the county’s coastal areas, must be approved by the state commission.

The review was delayed until March 24 because planning commissioners hadn’t yet reviewed a letter from Oceane Ringuette, a California Coastal Commission district supervisor. The letter cited numerous problems with the county’s proposed amendments.

A complete revision of the Local Coastal Program, which was certified in 1981, began 16 years ago. All the chapters except the ones dealing with environmental hazards were certified by the state commission in 2019. In 2021, county supervisors voted to activate the certified amendments without changing the 1980s environmental hazards provisions.

“In sum, while we appreciate the county is thinking about adaptation strategies, these policies are controversial and need to be bolstered with additional analytical frameworks,” the letter said. “We strongly recommend that the County slow down the local process to discuss the details of such uncommon and untested policy approaches with Commission staff.”

“The county has indicated that instead of pursuing a complete hazards LCP chapter update, they would be bringing forward incremental updates which would tackle certain issues but would not cover the entirety of issues that were previously discussed between our staffs,” the letter said. “We believe that the best approach for this sort of hazards update would be a comprehensive update.”

In his staff report to commissioners, however, Jeremy Tejirian, a county planning official, wrote, “Slowing this process even more is not warranted or reasonable. The climate is changing, and it is time to take steps to adapt to those changes without further delay.”

The new amendments to the hazard provisions were proposed after Marin planners conducted extensive public outreach in November and December. Ten stakeholder groups were consulted, and a community webinar was conducted on Dec. 11 that attracted more than 250 participants.

According to the letter, the proposed provisions would “allow properties along the Tomales Bay shoreline, on Wharf Road in Bolinas, and in Seadrift at Stinson Beach to elevate livable space above certain elevations to address their hazardous locations.”

Kristin Drumm, a county planner, told commissioners that the proposed amendments would increase the height limit up to 30 feet to provide more flexibility to adapt to sea-level rise.

The letter noted that the proposed changes would also permit properties along Tomales Bay and Wharf Road to replace a wide variety of shoreline armoring structures as well as piers, caissons, revetments, rip rap and retaining walls, “ostensibly” without the type of analysis that is typically required.

“This is quite problematic under the Coastal Act,” the letter said.

The proposed amendments include deleting a policy to promote nature-based adaptation, such as dune enhancement, restoration or “living shorelines” over shoreline hardening.

Planning commissioners did not discuss the proposed changes because a copy of the state commission’s letter didn’t get to them until the day of the meeting. But several members of the public commented.

Ashley Eagle-Gibbs, executive director of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, expressed support for the issues raised in the letter.

“We did oppose approving the LCP without the critical environmental hazards chapter,” Eagle-Gibbs said. “However, the policies in the current draft have raised some concerns for us.”

But George Clyde, secretary of the East Shore Planning Group, whose members include homeowners and businesses on the east shore of Tomales Bay, said, “We were quite pleased with the draft with only a few items to discuss.”

“We were dumbfounded by the timing and the content of the Coastal Commission’s last-minute comments,” Clyde said. “It seems that nothing has been accomplished, and we’re back to the impasse that caused the county to withdraw the previously approved amendment to the environmental hazard section several years ago.”

Terry Houlihan, who owns a house in the Stinson Beach’s Seadrift area, said the letter raises the question: “What if anything can be done now with regard to environmental hazard amendments?”

“I think the answer to that,” he said, “is nothing.”