County planners told Marin supervisors this week it may take even longer than anticipated to reach agreement with California Coastal Commission staff on an update of the general plan governing Marin’s coastal areas.

The 35-year-old plan, known as the local coastal program, must be approved by the commission and has been in the works for more than eight years.

Supervisors on Tuesday voted unanimously to give county planners more time to work on the implementation section of the plan, which contains its rules and regulations, over the objections of Coastal Commission staff and environmentalists. Supervisors did, however, finalize the land use portion of the plan.

Significant changes in the local coastal program update include rules mandating that coastal properties prepare for sea-level rise and more lenient policies for farmers and ranchers seeking to build intergenerational housing on their land.

The commission reviewed the local coastal program in November, but at the final hour the county requested a continuance on the section of the plan having to do with environmental hazards — sea-level rise being chief among them. Commission staff is pushing for stricter rules related to preparing structures for sea-level rise than the county wants to adopt. The current deadline for the commission to act on the hazards portion of the local coastal program update is Sept. 29.

Hazards section

Supervisor Dennis Rodoni asked county planning staff and Nancy Cave, a district manager with the Coastal Commission, if they could commit to a date by which they would resolve their differences over the language of the hazards section.

“I’m really worried that we have future problems down the road not having an environmental hazards document we can both agree on,” Rodoni said.

Tom Lai, assistant director of the county Community Development Agency, said his target date was July 11. Cave, however, said that would be too late for meetings to be held to brief the public on the results prior to the commission voting on the hazards document in September. Cave said the commission specified in November that it wants public hearings to be conducted.

Lai said in that case the county’s only choice would be to withdraw the hazards section and resubmit it with the goal of having the commission approve it by May 2018.

Cave said, “We’ve been poised to have meetings on environmental hazards, and unfortunately we keep discussing issues that we thought were resolved last November.”

‘Difficult issues’

At the November meeting, the commission conditionally certified with suggested modifications the remainder of Marin’s local coastal program update. The original deadline for county supervisors to accept these modifications was May 2, but the county requested and was granted a one-year extension of that deadline to May 2, 2018.

The implementation section of the local coastal program update, which contains its rules and regulations, went before the Coastal Commission in 2015, but the county withdrew it before commissioners were able to vote on it. Jack Liebster, the planning manager overseeing county staff work on coastal policies, said at that time Coastal Commission staff was proposing 650 modifications to the implementation section.

“We have been jointly whittling those down ever since,” Liebster said. He said agreement had been reached on most of these issues by November.

“The ones remaining are some difficult issues,” Liebster said.

Liebster highlighted four of these issues in his written report to the Board of Supervisors. Most of them involve definitions; some could be seen as relating to the environmental hazards section.

Existing structure

First, Liebster said the commission’s modifications provide two different definitions for what constitutes an existing structure. One definition says the structure must have existed since Feb. 1, 1973, the other uses the date Jan. 1, 1977.

This could be significant since to prepare for sea-level rise commission staff wants owners of coastal properties to be required to get a coastal development permit if they alter 50 percent or more of any major structural component such as a foundation, floor, roof or wall. And commission staff wants to make the 50 percent threshold retroactive to 1977.

Liebster said another commission modification would create a distinction between the definition of a “legal lot” and a “legal lot of record.” He said under this change all lots created prior to enactment of the Coastal Act would not qualify as legal lots.

Liebster said this could make most large farms in the coastal zone ineligible for one of the primary agricultural benefits of the LCP update: a more lenient policy for building intergenerational housing.

The county also has a problem with the commission’s definition of piers as a shoreline protective device. Liebster says this definition would make piers — which the county wants to encourage property owners to use to elevate structures in preparation for sea-level rise — subject to intensive standards of review.

And fourthly, Liebster said the modifications include a new requirement that anyone proposing a new or expanded well show that they are not adversely affecting adjacent streams, riparian habitats and wetlands on the subject lot or neighboring lots. The county believes that this requirement would be burdensome and expensive, and possibly impossible to comply with if a neighbor refused to grant access to their property.

Case dismissed county planning staff’s concerns and said if any problems emerge they could be addressed by way of future local coastal program amendments.

Public responds

During public testimony, Ashley Eagle-Gibbs, conservation director for the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, said the county is legally obligated to either accept all of the commission’s modifications or reject all of them.

Eagle-Gibbs said delaying acceptance of the implementation section of the plan would serve no purpose “other than to further delay the critical environmental hazards section while we all continue to live under the LCP which is now over 35 years old.”

Several speakers, representing Marin’s agriculture community, supported the planning staff’s request for more time.

“My request today is that the board not take any action until we at least develop a better understanding of the ramifications,” said Sam Dolcini, a fifth-generation Marin rancher and past president of the Marin County Farm Bureau.

Jeff Loomans of Stinson Beach, a member of the Seadrift Association representing property owners, said, “By voting today on the amendments to the implementation plan you would effectively preset many of the definitions that are currently under contention in the environmental hazards section. Don’t cut the legs out from us at this point in time.”

Bob Johnston, a member of the Marin group of the Sierra Club, said sections of the LCP update that would give ranchers and farmers greater rights to build housing as well as to sell and process agricultural products on their land with reduced oversight violate the California Coastal Act of 1976, which gave the Coastal Commission its current powers.

Johnston said, “I request that you withdraw everything and resubmit.”