Pacifica Tribune: Sharp Park Sea Wall OK'd Coastal Commission: Managed Retreat is Not Feasible

The headline in the 11-22-2017 Pacifica Tribune last week tells the story: "Sharp Park sea wall OK'd". I'd link to the story itself, but either they have not posted it on-line or I can't figure out how to find it. The article is a good summary of the recent California Coastal Commission decision granting a permit to the City of San Francisco to maintain and improve the Sharp Park sea wall. Some excerpts:

"The California Coastal Commission, recognizing the importance of the Sharp Park Sea Wall in protecting both Pacifica's historic golf course and the adjacent neighborhoods, has approved a permit to preserve and maintain the structure, including it's rip-rap armoring... 

Commission Chair Dayna Bochco... asked Commission staff what would be the likelihood of the surrounding neighborhoods being flooded without the protection of the sea wall. District Director Dan Carl said, "It's a 100 percent certainty if the berm wasn't there... you would open up a whole new can of worms with respect to Highway One and the residential neighborhoods surrounding the golf course"...  

The sea wall created a fresh-water habitat in the Laguna Salada and surrounding wetlands which are now home to two species protected under the EPA."

For anyone with a lick of common sense, this seemed an obvious outcome. You need only to look at what the Sharp Park sea wall protects:

The choice is simple - either maintain the sea wall, or play Russian roulette every winter waiting for an El Nino bullet to:

• Flood Pacifica neighborhoods
• Flood Highway One
• Salt poison the managed freshwater habitat of  Laguna Salada - home to the endangered California Red Legged Frog and San Francisco Garter Snake
• Flood the affordable recreational resource and important historic public golf course - Alister MacKenzie's Sharp Park masterpiece. 

The Coastal Commission decision was made, but San Francisco Rec & Park repair and reinforcing work of the sea wall is yet to begin. The consequences of a breach would be devastating to the community, endangered species, and Pacifica civic fiscal fortunes. To borrow a phrase: Winter is Coming.

We got lucky last year. The Pacific storm bullets are loaded in the chamber and the cylinder is spinning. Any Pacificans in favor of sea wall work starting before old man winter pulls the trigger might want to attend the Monday November 27 Pacifica City Council meeting and comment on Item 11:

"11.   Resolution supporting the City and County of San Francisco for Sharp Park Golf Course facility berm and maintenance repair and improvements, and incorporating flood mitigation, report, resolution."

It should be an easy decision - right?  Well, it should've been an easy decision for the Coastal Commission, yet 3 of the 12 Commissioners argued against granting the permit. The Pacifica City Council should send a strong, clear message to San Francisco stressing the importance and urgency of maintaining the berm now.

This is not a hypothetical concern. We know what will happen if  the sea wall is breached. We know because it happened before. The smaller un-reinforced berm that preceded the existing structure was over-topped by the 1982-83 El Nino storms. We know the population of endangered California Red-Legged frogs living in the managed fresh water Laguna Salada habitat was devastated by the berm failure. In a "My Turn" letter published in the same Pacifica Tribune edition cited earlier, Pacifica resident Robine Runneals explains exactly what happened to neighborhoods:

The 9th Circuit has something to say about WEI's appeal.

Steve scooped me, but I thought I'd still add my two cents in this post.

As noted, two weeks ago the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments for a Wild Equity Institute (WEI) appeal of district Judge Susan Illston's December 6, 2012 decision dismissing the WEI lawsuit against the City of San Francisco and the Sharp Park golf course. At the time, she dismissed the case  as "moot".

 Yesterday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rendered their judgement of the WEI appeal. But before we get to that judgement, a bit of context. In a recent post I attempted to translate the lawsuit legalese by offering my decidedly non-legal understanding of the merits of the WEI appeal. To whit:

"In this case, in simple terms, the Wild Equity Institute sued the City of San Francisco over whether they had the right permits and permission to continue golf operations, enhance the frog habitat, and provide needed infrastructure maintenance. The judge determined that the City did indeed have the correct permits and permissions, found the WEI lawsuit moot, and dismissed the case. WEI subsequently declared victory, and asked their legal fees to be reimbursed as a reward for managing to successfully get their own lawsuit declared moot. After the judge granted them 1/4 of the legal fees they wanted they issued another triumphant press release. Then they subsequently appealed the judgement of the lawsuit they claimed that they won.  For us, the untutored, non-lawyerly, great unwashed, this comes across as complete BS."

As it turns out, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of their decision is that it was rendered in only 600 words and less than two weeks after hearing oral arguments. 100 of those 600 words were consumed by the title of the lawsuit and listing the litigants. Cripes, I can't even write a blog post introduction in under 600 words. 

Alright. I've teased this long enough.  Here is the decision:

"Wild Equity Institute appeals from the district court’s order dismissing this case as moot. This case originated as an Endangered Species Act (ESA) Section 9 claim against the City and County of San Francisco, which was then operating Sharp Park Golf Course without any type of ESA permit. After Wild Equity filed suit, the City requested that the Army Corps of Engineers initiate consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) under ESA Section 7 in connection with the City’s application for a Clean Water Act (CWA) Section 404 permit. The district court stayed proceedings pending the outcome of the consultation, then concluded that the case was moot once FWS issued its Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statement (ITS) following the Section 7 consultation. Wild Equity argued on appeal that the ITS had no independent force prior to its incorporation into the City’s CWA permit. However, the Corps has since issued the relevant permit, which incorporates the terms of the ITS. California has also provided its state certification as required under CWA Section 401. Accordingly, and as Wild Equity has acknowledged, this appeal is moot... 

The issuance of the ITS and CWA permit have also fundamentally changed the legal landscape within which the parties are operating, reducing the likelihood that this issue will arise again between these particular parties... We therefore lack jurisdiction over this appeal. APPEAL DISMISSED."

I believe I have become adept at translating legalese into common parlance. Given that this decision was rendered so quickly (2 weeks), and so succinctly (600 words) , and specifically called out as a "memorandum"  disposition that is "not appropriate for publication and is not precedent" (i.e. not all that important legally) - I conclude that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals disposition of the Wild Equity Institute Appeal can be distilled to: "Why are you wasting our time with this crap?" 

Why, indeed. 

Kudos and thanks for the continuing good work from the San Francisco City Attorney's office led by Dennis Herrera and represented in court by Jim Emery, the San Francisco Public Golf Alliance founded by Richard Harris & Bo Links, and Joseph Palmore from the offices of Morrison & Foerster.

On to the next battle. They've lost the political battle with both the Pacifica City Council and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. They've lost in Federal Court. They've lost in the court of public opinion. Now they are moving to regulatory agencies, specifically the Coastal Commission. The hearing is in two weeks. Onward. 

Mike Wallach
Fix Pacifica Foreign Correspondent
San Francisco Bureau
X-posted on my other blog

Dispatches from the SF Golf War - The Sharp Park Budget Debate A Fair and Balanced Report

Early last week your San Francisco Foreign Correspondent joined the SF Public Golf Alliance and a strong Pacifica contingent to participate in the public comment portion of the San Francisco Budget and Finance Committee Meeting. Lines formed down the hall and around the corner in City Hall. We were asked to assemble by interest group, given alphabetical "tickets" and guidance on when we might expect to gain entrance to the committee room.

They started with the letter "A", we were in group "M", and we were told to expect to wait at least four hours. It turned out to be pretty accurate. It still took another hour after we entered the chambers to get our allocated two minutes in front of the budget committee and, believe it or not, some of us waited around to hear the opposition (who were even further back in the line).

Most everyone in line was there to defend their financial turf, demanding that their particular slice of the shrinking San Francisco pie not be touched. As near as I can tell, the golfers were the only ones at the meeting not asking for money, ready and willing to pay higher fees in order to help with the budget crisis and help Sharp Park.

It was heartbreaking to listen to the some of the disadvantaged who will be affected by the cuts coming in the San Francisco budget. The reality is the money is simply not there. The years of reckless spending by a fiscally irresponsible Board of Supervisors voted into office by politically irresponsible San Francisco voters are coming home to roost.

Hanging around City Hall for five hours, one has the opportunity to reflect on just WTF one is doing there. The simple answer is that we were there because the opposition was there to demand the closure of Sharp Park golf. It's not like there is any rational financial case to be made for closing the course, but having lost the scientific argument for the endangered frog and snake, I guess they have nowhere else to go. After they lose this one, I expect the lawsuit threats will start again.

Who Cares About Sharp Park Golf?

It looks like the San Francisco Golf War is about to enter a new chapter. Late last year, the Center for WEBLEEDU (Wild Equity Biodiversity Litigation for Ecological Extortion and Deep Untruths) failed to secure the destruction of the course and force the city to give away valuable coastal park land by using legal intimidation and bad science. Now, the advocates for the destruction of this historic landmark course are soliciting new allies and have turned to bad accounting as the new field of battle. There is no more merit to this new line of attack than any that have gone before. The sad thing is that the "protesters" don't seem to realize that green fees from Sharp Park golfers subsidize San Francisco Rec & Park overhead costs as well as other San Francisco services and not the other way around. If Sharp Park were to be closed, taxes would have be raised or more San Francisco services would need to be cut.

I have participated in the Sharp Park golf kerfuffle over the last year or so, posting both here and on my blog. I don't like to personalize the debate, as doing so detracts from the argument when simple truth, logic, and common sense support keeping the course. But this Plater character, this self anointed crusader for the destruction of the course, sure makes it hard to keep to the high road.

Brent Plater and his Big Brass Brent Buckle.

Consider this Platerism from a recent column in the SF Weekly:

"Nobody in San Francisco cares about Sharp Park," says environmentalist Brent Plater, executive director of the nonprofit Wild Equity Institute, who has spearheaded the campaign to close the course. "If that golf course were to fall into the ocean tomorrow, nobody would blink an eye... If Spock were in charge of these things, or the social insects, who deal with these collective problems a little bit better than we do, there's no doubt" that Sharp Park would be shut down, he says."

Really. Read it again. It's all there in this quote - The arrogant elitism: I Brent"Spock" Plater, Oakland resident, know what is best for you San Francisco and Pacifica plebeians; The slavish admiration for a hive mentality; The assertion that individual rights and needs are unimportant and must be subjugated to the will of the collective - particularly those collective needs as defined by the smarter and wiser Spock Brent Plater of course. This is a world view where unsupported pronouncements are reality and actual facts in direct contradiction to fabulist inventions are simply ignored. It is a lawyer's conceit - the conceit that one can paint a verbal picture so compelling the jury will not notice that the fantasy does not comport with actual reality.


Perhaps Brent Plater is right. Perhaps - despite Abe Lincoln's homily - you can fool most of the people most of the time. Based on the way that local fawning "journalists" in both the mainstream and independent media unquestioningly report anything he says, you'd think he was Moses delivering the Ten Commandments. They function as his personal PR firm and swallow the selfless environmental crusader bait - hook, line and sinker. And so the contributions come rolling in to the Brent Institute - or not - I have no idea. What the hell. I'll leave the links to Brent and the Brent Plater Institute in the referenced quote. For anyone who has so little respect for their hard earned dollars that they would give money to a guy who can say stuff like this with a straight face, well - you deserve each other. I am sure you will get exactly what you paid for. Maybe he'll send you a Brent Buckle.


That said, this particular absurdity:

"Nobody in San Francisco cares about Sharp Park... if that golf course were to fall into the ocean tomorrow, nobody would blink an eye."

- cannot be left unchallenged.

So permit me to offer a dose of reality. Compiled here are a few video clips of the people who care about Sharp Park. And a few of the people who will be hurt if Brent Plater gets his way.

Mirkarimi and Me

To be fair, he hasn't given anything away yet. I am just working up some ideas, should Mirkarimi decide to run for mayor as some expect.

I doubt that any of the regular readers of this blog need any context, but for the benefit of the random search engine visitor - some background links on the Sharp Park controversy can be found on my blog linked here, Barbara Arietta's posts here and here, San Francisco Chronicle op-eds here and here.

In a nutshell - Last year, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) wrote a letter threatening to sue the city of San Francisco alleging golf operations at Sharp Park were harming two endangered species found at the park. The Sharp Park Golf course is located in 400 acres of coastal land near Pacifica that was gifted to The City almost 100 years ago. In March of '09, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi sponsored a resolution to study alternative solutions to the problem, including keeping, destroying or modifying the course. The recently released report was approved by the SF Park & Rec Commission. It recommends continuing the course operations, with modifications to enhance the habitat for the endangered species. The CBD and their allies continue to advocate a different course of action. They want the City to destroy the golf course and give the land away to the National Park Service, specifically the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA). Supervisor Mirkarimi, while non-committal, seems sympathetic to that plan.

Which brings me to this exchange between Mirkarimi and me during the public comment portion of the San Francisco Government Audit and Oversight Committee last month (2 minute excerpt from the SFGTV recording of the 4 hour meeting):

Ok. So, as my time ran out Supervisor Mirkarimi slapped me down pretty hard. That is fine. This was his committee and his venue, and he gets the last word.

But in the blogosphere, there are no last words.

Now, this kind of stuck in my craw. I know that this will come across as a "Damn, I wish I said that..." post, long after the moment has passed. It will come across like that because... well... that is exactly what I am doing. But while I was loaded for bear on Sharp Park minutiae, I was ignorant of the history of Crissy Field and the GGNRA as I stood in front of Supervisor Mirkarimi.

I am less ignorant now. So how about a little "compare and contrast" between Crissy Field and Sharp Park?

Crissy Field
Crissy Field was an airfield, built on landfill, that since 1915 was Part of the Presidio Army Base. Congress decided to close the base in 1989, and it was turned over to the National Park Service in 1994. It never belonged to the City of San Francisco. The 100 acre Crissy Field site was considered a hazardous waste dump, and over 87,000 tons of hazardous material had to be hauled away before the process of restoring the site could proceed. The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy (a public private partnership), did an extraordinary job raising the tens of millions of dollars needed to restore the site during the tech bubble of the late nineties. In partnership with the National Park Service, the 100 acre site was restored for the recreational use of all, including a relatively small 20 acre tidal marshland. It is now administered by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA). As I suggested in my comments to Supervisor Mirkarimi, all involved did an excellent job with Crissy Field, converting 100 acres of federal land that was a hazardous waste dump into federal land that is now a wonderful park. Kudos.

Sharp Park
In 1917, the 400+ acres of land near Pacifica known as Sharp Park was bequeathed to the City and County of San Francisco by the Murphey family. The deed specified the land be used exclusively for park and recreational purposes for the benefit of all. The golf course, comprising about 80 acres of that land, was designed and built by Alister MacKenzie, the world's most important golf course architect and opened in 1931. The park was landscaped by John McLaren, the godfather of San Francisco parks, including Golden Gate Park (which is also administered by SF Rec & Parks, not the GGNRA). The park and the golf course are important historical landmarks by any standard. It is historically important to the city of San Francisco, the city of Pacifica and to the golf world in general. Over the years, millions of people have enjoyed the course, the archery range, the rifle range, the hiking trails and and the beach that comprise the park land. Today, over 54,000 rounds per year from Sharp Park help subsidize the overhead costs for the San Francisco Park and Recreation Department as well as other city services and jobs. The park is a unique gem that was a gift to the people of San Francisco, belongs to the people of San Francisco, and is a legacy for future generations of San Franciscans. Unless Supervisor Markarimi succceeds in giving it away.

So let's review:

Crissy Field was a 100 acre federal landfill and hazardous material dump that was converted by GGNRA and private partners into a 100 acre federal park that The City could neither afford to restore or operate.

Sharp Park was a 400 acre oceanfront gift to the people of San Francisco. The park is home to an historic landmark golf course by the game's greatest architect, is enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of people every year, and helps subsidize overhead costs for the SF Rec & Park Department operations.

I think it is safe to say they are different.

So once again Supervisor Mirkarimi, I ask you - Do you want this to be your legacy? Do you want your footnote in San Francisco history to be this: "He was the man who gave away 400 acres of coastal park land that belonged to the people of San Francisco."

I'll take my answer off-line.


Cross-posted from MW Mobile Blog

---------------------
Postscript - While the Publishers, Editors, Business Managers, Senior Correspondents, and Legal Staff for this blog remain huddled in the backroom working on the 4th revision of the long awaited 300 page opus - "Fix Pacifica Blog Posting and Commenting Policy and Style Guide" - I have given myself a promotion:


Mike Wallach
Fix Pacifica - Foreign Correspondent
San Francisco Bureau Chief