Sonoma County's hidden treasure: Estero Americano

Two decades ago Tom Yarish set out to visit a hidden and largely untouched estuary on the Sonoma-Marin border, a tidewater downstream of what was to be a vast wastewater storage and irrigation system proposed by the city of Santa Rosa.

An environmentalist and lifelong Marin County resident, Yarish had never heard of the Estero Americano. But he was stunned when he first looked on its beauty and the abundance of life there.

?I cherish it because it is like a frontier,? said Yarish, a co-founder of Friends of the Esteros, a group that helped keep urban wastewater out of the watershed.

The Estero Americano today remains a place that most North Bay residents have never seen, even though it lies within a short drive of Santa Rosa. The estuary is one of the few in California that has escaped development.

A government report touts the dramatic, ?fjord-like? estuary and its steep slopes and weathered cliffs on the Pacific Ocean between Dillon Beach and Bodega Bay. The waters often lie shut off from the ocean?s waves by a wide, secluded beach. On a calm day, the estuary can seem as still as a lake.

In its bottom reach, the tidewater meanders wide and open between the cliffs and rolling hills. But upstream the estuary becomes a narrow ribbon, at times a ?muddy ditch? amid cow pastures, as one kayaker?s guide describes it.

The Estero Americano has stayed remote because there is no access overland, no public road or trail to it. It lies surrounded by privately owned grazing land.

The only way for the public to draw near is by water. Kayakers and other boaters have done so for years, most of them putting in near an unadorned highway bridge west of the ranching community of Valley Ford.

About 20 years ago the paddlers began the annual Cow Patty Pageant race, originally spawned to build opposition to the Santa Rosa wastewater plans. This winter local landowners wrote a letter objecting to the race, saying it was too disruptive.

The event went on anyway, though one neighbor parked trucks in an unsuccessful attempt to block access to the estuary. The two sides continue to disagree about the appropriateness of the race and whether it disturbs wildlife in and near the water.

?We want it to be quiet and serene and beautiful, and people to enjoy it as we do,? said Nichola Spaletta, a Point Reyes dairywoman and the leader of 42 landowners who, a few years ago, formed the Estero Preservation Association. She insisted that the association supports kayaking in the estuary, but that ?it?s not suitable for races.?

John Dye, who oversaw this year?s race, said the event attracted only 50 paddlers, and the participants were instructed beforehand to stay off private property and to pick up any trash they came across.

?It?s interesting for me to think that the kayakers have such an impact out there,? said Dye. He maintained the only thing the paddlers left behind them was a small wake.

Like the Laguna de Santa Rosa, another Sonoma County waterway, the Estero Americano has been reshaped by the works of man.

?You used to be able to navigate a boat to the town of Valley Ford,? said Lisa Hulette, executive director of the Gold Ridge Resource Conservation District, the Occidental-based agency working with landowners to restore the watershed.

But after the land was cleared for potatoes and other crops in the late 1880s, large amounts of topsoil washed into the waterway. Between 1850 and 1953, an estimated 1 million cubic yards of sediment entered the estuary and its tributaries, according to the conservation district?s 2007 Estero management plan.

The estuary today is a tiny channel when it passes the village of Valley Ford. It is also a water body that the state says has been degraded by too much sediment and too many nutrients, most of which come from agriculture.

The conservation district, with whom the landowners work voluntarily, has improved water quality in the estuary and has received an award for its work there from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said Luis Rivera, assistant executive officer of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The conservation district already has spent $2.5 million on various restoration projects, Hulette said, and hopes to spend $1.5 million more when the state?s budget woes allow the funds to be released.

The watershed includes 16 beef cattle ranches, eight sheep ranches and 12 dairies, according to the management plan. The dairies lie upstream, while the lower reach is surrounded by grazing land.

Environmentalists and ranchers alike speak of the uniqueness of the estuary and the demands of nature placed on those who have spent their lives along it.

?You have to love the wind,? said Joe Pozzi, a rancher whose cattle roam the grasslands on the Sonoma Land Trust?s 127-acre Estero Americano Preserve. ?You have to love the cold, foggy, damp weather.?

The land trust occasionally allows public access at the preserve for kayak trips and other guided visits.

On a calm, sunny morning last week, Shanti Wright, the preserve?s manager, took two visitors to a bend in the estuary where the hill on the opposite bank resembles a gecko?s head. Deer grazed on a nearby slope, and a cormorant leapt from an offshore piling, its tail feathers skimming the water before the black bird took flight.

The estuary, said Wright, is ?one of the areas that defines Sonoma County.?

?It?s dazzling,? she said, ?and anyone who comes out here knows this place is rare and incredible.?

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@ pressdemocrat.com.