The parking lot at Drakes Estero is now a “Hard Hat Area,” and will remain so for the next several months.

The public is barred from the site on weekdays from now until at least next February; kayaking is allowed only on weekends and holidays.

The rest of the time, Drakes Estero is closed to paddlers, and so is Limantour Estero.

A notice at the site tells us this temporary closure is necessary for public safety, because “multiple pieces of heavy equipment, including large transport vehicles, will be in operation on both the access road and the parking area. Large marine barges with heavy equipment will be in operation on the waters. Large scale debris removal will occur on both waters and land.”

This major construction effort is being conducted by the Park Service at Point Reyes National Seashore to pull the oyster racks from Drakes Estero.

Press reports mention a permit from the California Coastal Commission, and the seashore is reported to have consulted with the National Marine Fisheries Service, but no scientific documents have been made public, and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process has not been followed.

NEPA is meant to apply to all government agency actions that affect the environment; it includes a public comment process and preparation of a formal Environmental Assessment or Environmental Impact Statement.

When the park was considering whether to shut down the Drakes Bay oyster farm, it spent roughly $2 million on an elaborate Environmental Impact Statement process that went on for years and included extensive public comment — to study the continuation of a benign, century-old farming activity.

When the owners of Drakes Bay Oyster Co. wanted to simply repair some of the oyster racks, the state Coastal Commission would not provide a permit.

But when the Park Service decides to remove the historic oyster racks and dredge the estero in a multi-million-dollar construction effort that will use heavy equipment to rip out seven acres of wooden oyster racks that reach at least 5 feet down into the estero bottom, NEPA is not invoked and the public is not invited to comment.

Instead, the park is offering the public a fictive cover story. It is calling this project a “restoration” of the estero, and claiming, without supporting data, that it will promote the expansion of eelgrass.

The exact opposite is at least as likely to be true.

Eelgrass beds expanded significantly in the estero thanks to the oysters, which clarified the water column by their filter-feeding action, permitting more sunlight to penetrate the water. That has all now changed. The removal of the oysters alone will mean a reduction in water clarity and a reduction in the growth of eelgrass.

Excavation and dredging of the water bottom will cause further untold damage to the estero floor. Or so, under the precautionary principle, we must assume, as no Environmental Assessment of the impacts of this activity has been conducted.

The oyster racks being removed from Schooner Bay are not, as the park calls them, “debris,” at least not until turned into such by the heavy equipment that destroys them. These oyster racks were constructed to support an innovative oyster-growing method that supplied the Bay Area with nearly 85 percent of Marin County’s oysters for decades.

Tearing out the oyster racks without formal assessment of the environmental impacts this action will cause is reckless, and probably illegal under NEPA.

The park won the oyster war with false claims of damage to the estero. Now it is acting as if a major excavation project — including dredging of the estero bottom — does not constitute an “action” under NEPA.

While calling the effort a “restoration” that will benefit its new “wilderness,” Point Reyes National Seashore officials have told the press they are considering turning the shore of Drakes Estero into a campground; is it for this that we were forced to sacrifice 30 local jobs and over half of California’s sustainable shellfish aquaculture production capacity while facing food uncertainties from the climate change ahead?

Apparently what really matters at the seashore is not policy, not process, not environmental quality and not wilderness values, but simply that the National Park Service continues to have free rein to pursue its own agenda, free of public oversight.

Phyllis Faber of Mill Valley is a wetlands biologist. Sarah Rolph is writing a book about the Drakes Bay oyster farm battle. She is based in Carlisle, Massachusetts.