Cleanup transforms Drakes Estero

On the windswept shore of Drakes Estero, it’s as if 80 years of oyster farming have been erased overnight.

A $300,000 federal government cleanup has removed most traces of the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. operation, and a new era has begun for the 2,500-acre estuary, now reserved for kayakers, picnickers and other human visitors, along with the panoply of wildlife thriving in and on the cold, clear water.

The 5-acre site where the weatherbeaten oyster sales shack, wooden dock and related structures once stood was scraped clean by a government contractor who hauled away 660 cubic yards of material plus 6,256 square feet of asphalt and concrete, leaving behind a lone utility pole on the oyster shell-covered beach.

The onshore work cost $214,372, while another crew retained by the National Park Service in January extracted 37,000 pounds of oysters, clams and aquaculture debris from the water at a cost of $87,000 - a task and price tag far from complete.

Scheduled to start in July is the heavy lifting of the Park Service’s Drakes Estero Restoration Project: the removal of 95 wooden oyster growing racks, spread out in the shallow waterway and collectively stretching for 5 miles and covering 7 acres, made from about 477 tons of lumber, all of it at least 10 years old.

The Park Service has applied to the California Coastal Commission for a permit to pull the racks and remove shell and aquaculture debris below them while consulting with experts on how to do the work with “the lightest hand” in a sensitive marine environment, said Melanie Gunn, outreach coordinator at Point Reyes National Seashore.

“It’s a very complicated project,” Gunn said, one that appears to be unprecedented in Park Service annals. “It’s all going to come out,” she said, referring to the accumulated impact of oyster cultivation in the estero dating back to 1935.

The era came to an end with the eviction of Drakes Bay Oyster Co. from the shoreline on Dec. 31, two years after former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declined to renew the farm’s permit to operate in federal waters and six months after the Supreme Court declined to hear co-owner Kevin Lunny’s case, ending his legal battle to continue a business that harvested $1.5 million worth of oysters a year from the estero.

Under a court-approved settlement, Lunny agreed to remove all shellfish from the waterway at his own expense. Lunny said he disposed of 5 million oysters and 1 million clams, but Park Service surveys in January found shellfish hanging from racks and in growing bags resting on sandbars.

Removal of the racks and refuse is intended to promote expansion of the estero’s vast eelgrass beds and minimize the hard-surface habitat for an invasive tunicate, or sea squirt, called Didemnum vexillum, according to the Park Service’s permit application.

It’s also a daunting proposition, as the wooden legs of the racks go 5 feet down into the estero’s muddy bottom and many of them are dilapidated. Tests in February found that pulling out the racks with cables and a winch capable of exerting 2,000 pounds of force was neither suitable nor safe, and the Park Service now intends to deploy a hydraulic excavator on a barge to retrieve the racks and debris.

The offshore cleanup is expected to take 146 work days from July through November, skipping 37 days when the tides and wind will be unfavorable.

Gunn said the cost has not been estimated.

Amy Trainer, executive director of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, said the rack removal could cost $3 million.

The cleanup, Trainer said, is “very inspiring,” and she complimented the Park Service for tackling the restoration so quickly.

Trainer’s group was a staunch advocate for removing the oyster farm, the only commercial operation on the estero, part of the 33,000-acre Point Reyes seashore designated by Congress as wilderness in 1976. The estero, surrounded by cattle ranches that were allowed to remain in pastoral status, couldn’t officially become wilderness until the oyster operation ceased.

That step officially took place in December 2012, days after Salazar declined to renew the oyster farm permit issued 40 years ago.

His decision, capping a yearslong controversy that roiled the West Marin community and gained national attention, still raises hackles among those who saw the oyster farm as a sustainable, eco-friendly food operation.

“No way that’s going to be turned into wilderness,” said Phyllis Faber of Mill Valley, a former Coastal Commission member and co-founder of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust.

Wilderness “implies an absence of man,” which is impossible at the estero considering a road runs by it and grazed pastures surround it, she said. The wilderness designation “is an idealism that isn’t realistic,” Faber said, calling it a “poor management choice” by the Park Service.

Neal Desai, director of field operations for the National Parks Conservation Association’s Pacific Region, said the estero is now on a path to “heal from decades of degradation” due to oyster farming.

“So many will benefit, from the thousands of marine mammals and migratory birds that seek refuge in the estero to the American public that can finally experience the seashore’s ecological heart in its wild form,” he said in an email.

Drakes Estero, a five-fingered Pacific Ocean estuary, is home to a harbor seal colony, leopard sharks, bat rays, crabs and a wealth of birds and fish.

The oyster farm site will continue to be an estero access point, primarily for kayaks and canoes, Gunn said, although it is currently closed to all boating, as usual, during the harbor seal pupping season through June 30.

In the longer term, following completion of the restoration project, the Park Service will consider public uses of the estero, possibly including camping, she said.

Five housing units occupied by former oyster farm workers will remain at the site until mid-May or early June as a federal contractor and Legal Aid of Marin continue efforts to relocate the workers, Gunn said.

When they are gone, the housing and power lines will be removed, leaving only the boat launch and a campground-style toilet at the north end of Schooner Bay, reached by an unpaved road off Sir Francis Drake Boulevard about 5 miles west of Inverness.

Gunn, who has hiked along the estero and heard coyotes howling at dusk, said the place has the potential to become one of the seashore’s most popular spots.

“It’s really a magical place,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.