NORTH BAY BOHEMIAN | DECEMBER 28, 2011–JANUARY 3, 2012 | BOHEMIAN.COM
8
Paper THE
SPOILS A Sausalito company plans to fill in the Carneros River Ranch, while some speculate there’s more to the project.
Fill ’Er Up
A massive South County project has environmental watchdogs guessing BY DARWIN BOND-GRAHAM
S
onoma County has seen plenty of forest-to-vineyard conversions in recent years, usually involving chainsaws and bulldozers. Yet in what may be a first of its kind, Sausalito-based Berg Holdings Co. is planning to create a 528-acre ranch suitable for growing wine
grapes and other crops by literally building land from scratch. Or is that the plan? The Carneros River Ranch lies at the mouth of the Petaluma River, in its historic floodplain, directly across from Port Sonoma. Companies controlled by Berg own both the ranch and the port. At the port, Berg plans to assemble an industrial complex capable of receiving and
processing 18.5 million cubic yards of wet dredge spoils from the San Pablo Bay, pumping the material under Highway 37 onto the ranch site. This fill material will be spread, dried and compacted as it’s received over the span of 20 years. When complete, the ranch will have risen from one foot above sea level to between seven and 11 feet. “This material is fine, salty clay without a lot of organic matter,”
explains J.T. Wick, a principle with Berg Holdings overseeing the project. “We mix worm castings with it to create fertile soil.” Beyond the river’s southern stretch was once a brackish marsh teeming with wildlife. But levees built by ranchers in the late 1800s cut off seasonal floods and destroyed much of the riparian habitat. Today, the low elevation of the Carneros Ranch and its separation from the flows of the river and bay make it suitable only for shallow-rooted crops, like wheat. Lifting the elevation is therefore being sold as an “agricultural enhancement,” and as such, the Sonoma Land Trust has given the project its blessing. Numerous environmental organizations, like the Sierra Club’s Redwood Chapter, are taking a different position. Last July, the Sierra Club asked the County Board of Zoning Adjustments (BZA) to require a full environmental impact report. The BZA denied that request, ruling instead that the existing mitigated negative declaration (MND) was sufficient. The Sierra Club and other organizations are appealing the BZA’s decision. A hearing is set for January. “Given the proposed expansion of the port of Sonoma into an industrial facility, which is unaddressed in the negative mitigated declaration, the county owes it to the public to do a full EIR on the project,” says David Keller of the Petaluma River Council. Keller’s group hasn’t formally joined the Sierra Club’s appeal, but says, in support, “the appeal should be sustained.” Berg Holdings’ lawyer Stephen Butler told Sonoma County officials back in October that the Sierra Club’s concerns were misinformed. “The project and the MND were attacked at the last minute without analyzing either the project file or the MND itself,” Butler wrote to supervisor David Rabbit. “As a result of the Club’s appeal, the opportunity to redirect dredge material has been lost for this season,” concluded Butler. Rue Furch, who served on the BZA from 1991 to 2009, has studied the project’s