Although Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last Thursday proposed closing Tomales Bay State Park to save money, several knowledgeable people here doubt that will happen, especially if the opposition is sufficiently vocal.

Park visitor Dave LaFontaine of Los Angeles hikes through Tomales Bay State Park. Photos by Janine Warner, founder of DigitalFamily.com.

The park, which includes Hearts Desire Beach, Indian Beach, Pebble Beach, Shell Beaches I & II, and Millerton Point totals 2,000 acres. It is among 43 parks statewide the governor wants to close to save a total of $13 million per year.

With state-government spending in fiscal 2008-09 now projected to exceed revenue by $14.5 billion, the governor has proposed slashing 10 percent from most departments’ budgets. That would reduce healthcare for 6.6 million low-income people in order to save $1.1 billion a year. Spending on public education (kindergarten through high school, junior college, the state university system, and UC system) would be cut by $4 billion.

The governor, whose personal wealth is more than $100 million (The San Francisco Chronicle has reported), proposed that spending on Social Services for poor families be cut by $390 million per year. Schwarzenegger would likewise cut child-welfare payments by $84 million per year. Aid to low-income people who are blind, otherwise disabled, or elderly would be cut by $300 million per year. Care for foster children would drop by $82 million per year.

“I have made it very clear we cannot tax out way out of this problem,” Schwarzenegger said. “There’s no reason to tax anyone because our system doesn’t work,” the governor added ambiguously.

Inverness resident Carlos Porrata was the resident ranger for Tomales Bay State Park when he retired in 2004. Carlos had been a state park ranger 28 years, including two in Samuel P. Taylor State Park and 24 years on Tomales Bay. Now a trustee of the Marin Community Foundation, Carlos wrote me, “I was very disappointed when I heard the news that Tomales Bay State Park was one of the state parks being considered for closure.”

“The Office of the Governor asked State Parks to come up with a plan proposal for a $17 million reduction for the 2008-09 fiscal year budget (a 10 percent cut). Most of the department’s budget is personnel, so the decision was made to eliminate positions by closing a series of parks.

“To choose which parks would be proposed for potential closure a set of filters (criteria) was developed. The filters were: 1) Can the park be physically closed to the public? 2) If the park were closed, would it save the amount needed? (In the case of Marin District, [the proposed closure] entails two permanent positions). 3) Closures would have to be spread around throughout the whole state.

“It should be emphasized that this is just a PROPOSAL and a lot of back and forth will soon start between the Legislature and the Governor’s Office. I do not think the [Marin] District has started conversations as to what closing Tomales Bay State Park would entail operationally or if there might be other possibilities to achieve the required [spending] cut.

A raft for swimmers at Tomales Bay State Park with Indian Beach in the distance.

“The closure of Tomales Bay State Park would certainly be a challenge. Although the entrance gate to Hearts Desire beach can be closed, we all know that the State Park beaches are easily accessible by boat and kayaks. Jepson Trailhead and the south boundary trailhead to Shell Beaches I and II are also easily accessible.

“I clearly remember having gone through this predicament in the early 1990s, and although a large number of positions were eliminated, park closures never materialized. A lot of [proposals] ended up being part of the process in the political dance between the Legislature and the Governor’s Office.

“If the closure of that jewel of the state parks were to become a reality, another big loss would be the Environmental Living Programs that are held at Indian Beach for fourth and fifth graders throughout the school year, a signature program for Marin District.

“The good news is that Tomales Bay State Park personnel would not loose their jobs; they would probably be reassigned to another one of the park units (e.g. Samuel P. Taylor), and two open positions would not be filled, achieving the savings needed.”

State Park maintenance worker Roberto Barajas on Sunday cuts up trees that fell against a Tomales Bay State Park building in the recent storms.

One of those who doubts whether much money can be saved by closing the state park is LeeRoy Brock of Point Reyes Station. A retired ranger at the neighboring Point Reyes National Seashore, LeeRoy was a ranger at Bandolier National Monument in New Mexico when it was temporarily closed two decades ago.

There was no way to keep the public off the land, he said, so federal employees were still needed to clean up litter, maintain facilities, and patrol the area. LeeRoy suspects the situation would be the same at Tomales Bay State Park. Like Carlos, LeeRoy said there are too many places to enter the park on trails or by boat to keep people out.

State facilities, such as those getting park-maintenance workers Roberto Barajas’ and Janet Tafoya’s attention after the last storm, will still need protection from the elements, not to mention vandals. But under the governor’s proposal, there would be no Hearts Desire’s entrance fees to help pay for the work.

As one current state park official told me, it’s possible the Point Reyes National Seashore would try to acquire Tomales Bay State Park if it closed. That would be a shame, he added, for it’s already being run “efficiently.”

“This week,” Carlos said, “I will be writing to State Senator Carole Migden and Assemblyman Jared Huffman, sharing my concerns and disappointment about the proposed closing of Tomales Bay State Park, or any other parks, for that matter.

“Without taking away from the importance of parks and trails, however, I am personally very upset about the proposed cuts to the health, welfare and education of so many poor and needy children and families in California. They will be devastated by the draconian cuts that will affect other state agencies while the governor is willing to sink a huge sum of money into building a new death-row facility. Go figure.”

Tomales Bay State Park is rich in Miwok Indian middens. Its beaches are sheltered from the prevailing wind. And it is geared to families, who can park near picnic tables and barbecues overlooking the bay.

How did the park come to be? “Most of the Tomales Bay area lay untouched until the late 1940s, when developers discovered its beauty and began to purchase beachfront lands,” notes the State Park website.

“Local residents, fearing that the beaches would be closed to public use, formed a committee to help secure the land for park purposes. The Marin Conservation League, various conservation and civic organizations, and the state purchased portions of the area. On Nov. 8, 1952, Tomales Bay State Park was dedicated and opened to the public.”

“State Park Property. All features protected. This is your heritage. Help Guard It…”

Yet after all the work that went into creating Tomales Bay State Park, the future of its land is again in doubt.

Old Christmas trees piled behind the Arthur E. Disterheft Public Safety Building in Point Reyes Station this week.

County firefighters each year encourage West Marin residents to drop off their old Christmas trees at firehouses. The trees are chipped and hauled off, eliminating the risk of dry trees accidentally catching fire around the house. I dropped my tree off at the Point Reyes Station firehouse Monday after calling ahead to make sure I could do so a day after the recycling program supposedly ended for the year. No problem, I was told.

Of course, old Christmas trees shed pine needles whenever they brush against something, so I wasn’t especially happy about hauling the tree in my car’s trunk. “Too bad you can’t just drag it behind your car,” my houseguest Linda Petersen said with a laugh.

I could imagine my route to the firehouse littered with Christmas tree branches and cited the State Vehicle Code, which says that when hauling stuff on a public roadway, you must make sure none of it ends up in the road, with two exceptions, one of which you may never have thought about.

As the Highway Patrol officer, whose patrolcar is seen here, later confirmed in detail, Section 23114 of the Vehicle Code provides: “A vehicle may not be driven or moved on any highway unless the vehicle is so constructed, covered, or loaded as to prevent any of its contents or load other than clear water or feathers from live birds from dropping, sifting, leaking, blowing, spilling, or otherwise escaping from the vehicle.”

This allows farmers to transport “livestock,” the CHP officer said. In short, if you’re allergic to feathers, it’s up to you not to tailgate the turkey truck.

Wild Turkeys at Dawn. Monday morning I was awakened by 37 wild turkeys gobbling outside my bedroom window. Transported by the sunrise, they dropped few feathers.

The non-native turkeys were introduced into West Marin in 1988 by a hunting club working with the State Department of Fish and Game. You can read that story at Posting 76. By now there are far more turkeys than turkey hunters, and their flocks have spread throughout West Marin.

Hunting and slaughtering animals are not for everyone, but for the edification of those inured to them, the Associated Press in 1875 reported on a get-rich-quick scheme for perpetual-motion farming then being advertised in Lacon, Illinois:

“Glorious Opportunity to Get Rich. We are starting a cat ranch in Lacon with 100,000 cats. Each cat will average 12 kittens a year. The cat skins will sell for 30 cents each. One hundred men can skin 5,000 cats a day. We figure a daily net profit of over $10,000. Now what shall we feed the cats? We will start a rat ranch next door with 1,000,000 rats. The rats will breed 12 times faster than the cats. So we will have four rats to feed each day to each cat. Now what shall we feed the rats? We will feed the rats the carcasses of the cats after they have been skinned. Now Get This! We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats and get the cat skins for nothing.”

The advertisement not surprisingly turned out to be a hoax. The perpetrator was an Illinois editor named Willis B. Powell.

Parts of the Big Mesa in Bolinas finally had their power restored at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday after being blacked out for more than five and a half days by last week’s stormy weather.

Much of the blackout on the Mesa resulted from fallen lines near the Elm Road home of Serena Castaldi. However, pockets of homes on the Big Mesa, as well as the downtown, lost power for only brief periods. High winds, which were clocked at hurricane force on Big Rock Ridge near Nicasio Friday morning, also caused multi-day blackouts in parts of that town and in parts of Inverness.

Bolinas resident Laura Riley told me that by the time her home got its power back Wednesday afternoon, “my humor was starting to flag. It’s hard to do everything in the dark…

“We have a woodstove we heat with normally,” Laura said, and her home’s kitchen stove uses propane, so she could cook. For a while she used up food that was thawing in the refrigerator. “It was fun,” she wryly commented, “for about two and a half days, but how long do you want to eat that old turkey?”

Laura said her home’s on-demand water heater burns propane but has an electric starter, so it didn’t work. Her family, she added, spent a fair amount of time at her brother Ned’s home next door, which also has an on-demand, propane water heater but with no electric starter.

In fact, several Bolinas people told me that the worst part of the blackout was going without hot water for almost a week.

Jonathan Rowe of Point Reyes Station is known for a number of things. He hosts America Offline on KWMR at 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays (rebroadcast at 11 a.m. Thursdays). He is an advocate for a commons in town. He is a contributing editor to The Washington Monthly and YES! magazines. And he seems to do much of his writing on a laptop computer in the open-air coffeehouse at Toby’s Feed Barn.

More than a few passersby have seen Jonathan staring into his computer screen and wondered what kind of stuff he writes. This week, some folks here found out. As a number of people have alerted me in the past 36 hours, The Columbia Journalism Review just published a long article by Jonathan on The Point Reyes Light and The West Marin Citizen, as well as on the types of readers in these small towns. The article titled The Language of Strangers is already online.

Jonathan’s piece is accompanied by Inverness writer Elizabeth Whitney’s transcription of the community meeting a year ago in the Dance Palace where residents said what they wanted in their hometown newspaper.

Columbia Journalism Review, the best-known trade magazine watchdogging newsrooms around the US, is headquartered at Columbia University in New York City.

FRUSTRATION ON THE PRAIRIE

Every year or so for a couple of decades The Point Reyes Light and I would hear from a woman in Kansas named Melissa Koons. She filled us in on what was happening in her hometown of Newton (pop. 17,000) and on how her own writing was going.

This year when she wrote The Light, the paper forwarded her letter to me. The three-page, handwritten letter provides a glimpse into what it feels like to be an older progressive on the prairie. “Believe me,” she wrote, “it’s very hard to speak my mind in general public here in my own state of Kansas.”

Melissa, as a result, has chosen to speak her mind in A Poem on Ethics: “What is ethics?/ It is:/ People who have a voice./ Doing something about the world’s problems./ What comes to mind?/ Simple:/ Conservation./ Accepting people as they are./ Communication/ To change the viewpoint/ Of world leaders./ So what are we waiting for?/ Is anybody listening?”

Melissa Koons, a free-verse voice crying out on the Kansas prairie.

The first of three expected weekend storms blew through West Marin Friday, causing flooding, toppling trees, and closing roads.

Matt Gallagher of Point Reyes Station (using a shovel for a paddle) and Tony Smith check on Jim and Kathy Love’s levee road home. The Loves years ago raised their home on high stilts, so the living area stays dry regardless of what nearby Papermill and Olema creeks do.

Friday’s wind speed was at least as high as an East Coast hurricane.

On the Beaufort Scale used by mariners, winds reach hurricane force at 74 mph. The National Weather Service considers winds to have reached hurricane force at 80 mph. At 8:33 a.m. Friday, a National Weather Service monitoring station on Big Rock Ridge just east of Nicasio clocked the wind holding steady at 83 mph.

Exactly 23 minutes later, county firefighters received a call that a 50-foot-high tree had been blown onto a house at 25 Drakes Summit Rd. in Inverness Park. Although there was “major damage” to the home, no one was injured, Fire Capt. Joe Morena told me. He added that the house was sturdily built.

The backstop, infield, and outfield were flooded by Olema Creek Friday at Love Field next to the home of Jim and Kathy Love.

At least four inches of rain fell in much of Marin County, swelling West Marin Creeks, which flooded roadways. Around noon, Highway 1 was flooded between Point Reyes Station and Olema and between Bolinas and Stinson Beach. Papermill/Lagunitas Creek flooded Platform Bridge Road and (briefly) the Point Reyes Petaluma Road just east of Highway 1.

Calle Arroyo in Stinson Beach flooded, and Panoramic Highway leading over Mount Tamalpais from town was closed by fallen trees near Mountain Home Inn. Fallen trees also closed Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in Samuel P. Taylor State Park.

Gary Cheda, owner of Cheda’s Garage in Point Reyes Station, told me his towtrucks pulled two cars and a van off flooded Highway 1 just south of town.

Gary said motorists increase their chance of stalling if they don’t proceed slowly on flooded pavement. Driving faster kicks up water into the engine compartment. When water gets into the cylinders, it can’t be compressed and piston rods are bent, he explained.

Although the creeks are not saltwater, Gary noted, they nonetheless are brown with “grit,” which also is bad for car engines. Grit can into engine rings and seals where it sometimes causes expensive problems, he said.

In addition to flooding, fallen trees and limbs that blocked roads made driving difficult throughout West Marin Friday. The fire captain told me county firefighters from the Point Reyes Station firehouse spent much of Friday clearing away downed trees.

After this cypress tree blew down across Highway 1 on the north side of Point Reyes Station Friday morning, county firefighters partly reopened the road, but the northbound lane remained blocked all afternoon while firefighters and Caltrans dealt with crises elsewhere.

Broken limbs also brought down powerlines, and parts of Nicasio were without power for a day and a half. Olema and parts of Inverness experienced shorter blackouts. Overall, relatively few West Marin residents experienced more than momentary blackouts compared with residents of East Marin (especially Sausalito, Mill Valley, and Fairfax).

Nonetheless, downed powerlines can be shocking, and this one at Cypress and Overlook roads in Point Reyes Station sparked a (very small) fire notwithstanding the rain.

Art and Laura Rogers of Mesa Road in Point Reyes Station found their road flooded by Tomasini Creek at noon Friday and had to take another route downtown.

Not only did downed lines, fallen trees, and flooding make it difficult for motorists to leave West Marin, Sheriff’s. Lt. Doug Pittman issued a plea over KWMR for West Marin residents to stay at home. Over the hill, traffic was in “gridlock,” he said.

The problem again was high wind. Shortly before 11 a.m. Friday, it blew over five semi trucks traveling in both directions on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, leading to bridge closures off and on all afternoon. But that was not the worst of it.

Within an hour of overturning big rigs on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, the wind blew construction plywood and planks onto Highway 101 in San Rafael. Clearing away the construction material, which came from the new Highway 580 overpass, and making sure no more would blow down halted Highway 101 traffic for most of Friday afternoon.

At various times, vehicles were backed up 10 to 20miles in both directions on the freeway, and thousands of motorists detoured onto surface streets in East Marin.

Bad as the weather was in West Marin, most residents had reason to be prepared; the county fire department Thursday afternoon called virtually every household here with a recorded message that warned about the severity of the stormy weather to come.

It is possible to say too little and end up implying too much. Such is the case with this Marin County Environmental Health Department sign at the Green Bridge over Papermill Creek.

In all likelihood, most visitors to Point Reyes Station (as well as many townspeople) would read this sign to mean Papermill Creek is polluted. Moreover, the sign seems to suggest a person can be harmed by merely dipping his toe in the water.

Equally worrisome, Point Reyes Station’s water system is supplied by creekside wells not far upstream from the sign. The water system is, of course, operated by North Marin Water District, so I called NMWD senior chemist Stacie Goodpaster and asked if the town has a problem. Stacie was surprised to learn of the sign.

North Marin’s wells are set back from Papermill Creek and fed by creek water that is drawn through the sand-and-gravel subsoil. Monthly tests at the wells and the water system’s treatment plant haven’t found bacteria in the drinking water, Stacie said.

North Marin’s tests of Papermill Creek’s water have found only normal amounts of bacteria, including e-coli bacteria, she added. After a rain, of course, the amount of bacteria in the creek goes up temporarily, Stacie noted, because bacteria get washed into the creek.

However, she added, North Marin’s current testing cannot determine the source of the bacteria; they come from soil, decaying plants, or animal waste. She felt reasonably sure there has not been any sewage leak into the creek, for that would cause there to be at least 50 times as much e-coli in the water.

My next call was to David Smail, supervising health inspector for the Marin County Environmental Health Department. David’s first response was that the warning sign is overdue to come down. The county monitors the creek weekly from April through October, and the warning was supposed to come down soon after the Oct. 31 testing. David said he’d have the sign taken down right away.

The rest of the situation, however, is more complicated. For example, the State of California sets different standards for freshwater and saltwater recreation. The standards also differentiate between swimming, surfing, and other aquatic activities in which a person might swallow water (Recreation 1) and aquatic activities such as boating in which a person is unlikely to drink the water (Recreation 2).

David told me the warning signs go up when Recreation 1 standards are exceeded, even if the water may be safe for boating and other Recreation 2 uses.

Unlike North Marin, which monitors water quality by testing for total bacteria and for e-coli bacteria, Marin Environmental Health tests for enterococcus bacteria. However, neither agency’s tests indicate whether there are any pathogens in the water. In fact, with the occasional exception of one strain of e-coli, most bacteria found in West Marin water are not themselves dangerous.

Current water-quality tests determine only whether there are bacteria in the creek that MAY have passed through the gut of an animal or human. If either were sick, its waste MIGHT contain pathogens. Adding to the uncertainty, as Stacie at North Marin noted, such bacteria can also come from soil and decaying plants.

David at Environmental Health told me that under state standards for Recreation 1 freshwater, the maximum number of enterococcus bacteria per milliliter is 61 in a single day’s sample (104 for saltwater). The last sampling at the Green Bridge resulted in an enterococcus count of 63 (only two over the limit), but under established “protocol,” that requires a sign, David said.

In fact, according to people living along the creek, the sign has been up for months.

Like Stacie at North Marin, David at Environmental Health and Environmental Health chief Phil Smith both stressed to me that the amount of bacteria in the creek goes up when it rains. As it happened, rainfall throughout California averaged 125 percent of normal in October, and Marin led the way with almost 4 inches falling at Blackpoint in Novato. After all that rain, however, the enterococcus count in Papermill Creek was only two points over the Recreation 1 limit, suggesting its normal water quality is quite healthy.

Is all this an academic discussion? Not really.

Linda Petersen of Point Reyes Station with her dog Sebastian at White House Pool on Papermill/Lagunitas Creek.

As you could read in a posting from last October, Rod Ruiz, supervising ranger of Marin Parks, has been doing a good job of administering White House Pool. That great, little park was laid out to provide a number of overlooks along Papermill Creek for enjoying West Marin scenery, but a walker’s enjoyment of the view is inevitably diminished when she reads the creek is so polluted she should stay well away from it.

Because current tests may primarily count naturally occurring bacteria originating with plants and animals in Samuel P. Taylor State Park, the GGNRA etc., a sign that fails to acknowledge this possibility unfairly denigrates West Marin, making its scenic countryside sound troubled in ways it may not be.

Phil, the Environmental Health chief, in fact acknowledged that in recent years, Tomales Bay and creeks flowing into it have (along with “Muir Beach North”) received bad publicity that “erroneously” portrayed them as having poor water quality.

His department is now planning an $840,000 Beach Water Quality Testing Project to be financed with state money. The project will allow Environmental Health to determine if specific bacteria (such as a toxic strain of e-coli called O157H) are present in West Marin waters.

In its initial stage, however, the project still won’t identify the source of bacteria in the creek, plant, human, or animal, and if animal, what kind. In short, if something somewhere is contaminating the creek, the county still won’t know what or where. And if most of the bacteria in the creek are naturally occurring, the county won’t necessarily know that either.

However, Dr. Corey Goodman of Marshall, a National Science Foundation fellow, has offered the county $200,000 to refine its analysis of Tomales Bay water, Phil noted. If this leads to a second phase of the Beach Water Quality Testing Project, he added, the county might finally be able to track the sources of bacteria in Papermill and nearby creeks.

Until then, however, the tourists who read the county’s warning signs are likely to return from West Marin talking about how polluted our waterways are while residents here will sometimes wonder whether it’s safe to even paddle a canoe in Papermill Creek.

“Simply by being compelled to keep constantly on his guard, a man may grow so weak as to be unable any longer to defend himself.”  Nietzsche

If bill payments were among the letters this motorist mailed yesterday along Lucas Valley Road, he was risking identity theft, Assemblyman Jared Huffman warns.

A few weeks back Assemblyman Jared Huffman, who represents Marin County and Southern Sonoma County, sent his constituents a flier titled: “Identity Theft… How to Protect Your Privacy.” If I thought Huffman had authored it himself, I would worry that West Marin’s assemblyman suffers from acute paranoia.

In a section called “How to Reduce Your Risk,” Huffman’s flier’ advises, “Personal information that you should protect include your home address, home telephone number….

“When you pay bills, mail them at a US Postoffice. Do not leave them at your home mailbox, your workplace’s outbox, or even your neighborhood Postal Service mailbox. Neighborhood mailboxes can be burglarized.”

Wow! Our assemblyman (right) is warning Marin County and Southern Sonoma County residents that their street-corner mailboxes are too insecure to be trusted with a PG&E payment. What’s more, he’s saying, people should keep their names and addresses out of the phone book if they want to be safe.

Apparently, thieves have become as thick as they’re said to be. “Identity theft is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the nation,” Huffman’s flier warns. “Do not carry your… passport… or extra credit cards in your purse or wallet.” Wait a minute! Even in the world’s crime capitals such as Lagos, Nigeria, and Johannesburg, South Africa, we’re expected to carry passports and credit cards. But it’s too risky to do so in Marin County, Petaluma, and Rohnert Park?

The reason I doubt Huffman authored this fear-mongering is a couple of telltale items in the flier. Immediately below the assemblyman’s name and return address on the cover is an odd offer to be coming from a legislator: “Free Credit Report. See inside for details.” Inside the flier, residents are advised to “report [identity] fraud to the three major credit bureaus.”

As can be seen in the unfolded flier above, addresses and phone numbers are given for reporting fraud to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, and also for ordering credit reports from them. That the flier was mailed at taxpayer expense is obvious, but why my copy was also addressed to my former wife, who lives in Guatemala and is not a US citizen, is something of a mystery.

Two weeks after receiving Huffman’s warnings, I received yet another, this one from the CPA who prepares my income taxes. “We are contacting you about a potential problem involving identity theft,” the CPA’s letter began. “Our office was burglarized. No client files were stolen, but our computer server and a locked briefcase (which appeared to, but did not, hold a laptop computer) were stolen…. We advise that you file a Fraud Alert on your social security numbers by Calling TransUnion Credit Bureau at 800 680-7289.

Why, that was also the phone number on Huffman’s flier, so I called it and requested a Fraud Alert be placed on my Social Security number (should anyone else try to use it to open a credit account). TransUnion said I didn’t need to notify the other two credit bureaus. It would do it for me. I subsequently received a letter from TransUnion asking me to send verification that I am who I say I am. It also offered me a free credit report and, for only $7.95, a look at my “credit score.”

Okay, so the rest was a come-on to sell $8 credit scores. No wonder the credit bureaus’ fingerprints are all over Huffman’s flier. But no big deal either. Caveat emptor and all that.

What seems more telling is the choice of documents that TransUnion lists as acceptable for verifying a person’s address: a “utility bill, signed lease, canceled check, signed homeless-shelter letter, stamped postoffice-box receipt, prison ID.”

Homeless-shelter letter? Prison ID? It sounds as if credit bureaus hope to see even our street people and San Quentin inmates worried about their credit rating.

A motorist turns around just before sunset Saturday upon discovering the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road barricaded at Highway 1. The road was closed all day after a car crash brought down powerlines.

Two power outages in and around Point Reyes Station blacked out the town for approximately an hour and a half Friday evening and caused chaos on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road Saturday.

The first blackout began around 6:30 p.m. when PG&E shut off power to the town in order to repair a broken arm on a Third Street utility pole. The arm had been broken earlier in the day.

Before shutting the power off Friday, PG&E warned Point Reyes Station merchants, and nightspots such as the Old Western Saloon and the Station House Café remained open using candles and lanterns. Neighboring towns were not affected.

The second outage which blacked out only a few homes beside Nicasio Reservoir, resulted from a car crash around 1 a.m. Saturday. “Somebody knocked out a pole right at Graffiti Bridge,” Chuck Gompertz, who lives on nearby Laurel Canyon Road, told me. Gompertz said he learned from a neighbor that after the crash, the driver “jumped out of the car and ran away.” Point Reyes Station firefighters confirmed the driver had fled the scene.

When the car, a white Ford Bronco, broke the utility pole, powerlines fell across Platform Bridge (AKA Graffiti Bridge), forcing closure of both Platform Bridge Road and the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road.

Both remained closed Saturday morning and afternoon, with the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road barricaded at Highway 1 in Point Reyes Station and at Four Corners (the intersection with Nicasio Valley Road).

Saturday morning, “it was chaos, just chaos” at the unattended barricade at Four Corners, Gompertz said. “You have no idea how many people are heading to Point Reyes, Olema… on a Saturday morning.”

As it happened, a resident along the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road between Four Corners and Platform Bridge was having a party Saturday morning and asked another Nicasio resident, Pete Casartelli, to go down to the barricade and let guests through.

What Pete found, Gompertz said, was an endless stream of tourists frustrated and confused at finding their route to the coast blocked. Pete then took over directing traffic, added Gompertz, who temporarily joined him. “Pete was there for quite a while. He was wonderful.” Eventually Pete’s father-in-law, Spike Drady of the Nicasio Volunteer Fire Department, took over traffic control in his NVFD jacket. As a retired Highway Patrol officer, Spike knew the drill.

It seems that a fair number of coyotes are conducting their mating-season romances around Point Reyes Station this year. In the past three weeks, I’ve heard them howling almost every night right outside my cabin, typically with another coyote howling back. (This one along Limantour Road near the Sky Trailhead is the third coyote my houseguest Linda Petersen has recently seen and the second she has photographed.)

For some people, the influx of coyotes is bad news. Sheepmen, of course, hate the critters, and Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park three weeks ago wrote this blog that people had seen two coyotes grab a chicken in her neighborhood. Tony Ragona, owner of Windsong Cottage B&B on the north edge of Point Reyes Station, last week told me that the coyotes have taken to howling so loud and long outside his home that they sometimes keep him awake. When it goes on too long, Tony said, he shines a flashlight on them so they leave.

Paradoxically, the influx of coyotes is good news for birds that roost in scrub brush. Biologist Jules Evens of Point Reyes Station told me last week that when coyotes move in, the number of mesopredators goes down. By mesopredators, Jules said, he was referring locally to raccoons, opossums, skunks, and foxes. He might have added feral cats. In any case, they are all smaller predators that eat birds or birds’ eggs.

So what’s the connection with coyotes? Coyotes eat fox cubs, and they compete with foxes and cats for field rodents. In the main, however, coyotes reduce the number of mesopredators merely by their presence, Jules said. Foxes, raccoons, opossums, skunks etc. don’t like to be around coyotes and stay away from their territory.

Raccoons perform a pas de deux outside my dining room.

When the coyotes first started howling nightly three weeks ago, this hill’s performing raccoons stopped touring for a couple of days. By now, their traveling troupe has resumed making its rounds, but showtime is earlier in the evening, well before the coyotes start howling.

On more than a few mornings recently, there have been numerous freshly dug holes in my pasture. They are usually only two and three inches wide through grass and a short ways into the soil. Unable to figure out what critter was causing them, I asked Jules, who immediately knew the answer: “Wild turkeys.”

That made sense. This hill has recently seen an influx of not only coyotes but also wild turkeys. Notice the holes in the grass downhill from this flock. I’ve had 25 turkeys in my pasture at a time, and neighbor Carol Horick last week spotted more than 50 outside her home.

Another neighbor, George Stamoulis, today told me that in the last day or two, he had seen the first wild turkeys on his property.

But the sighting that George really relished was of a bobcat hunting outside his window last week. The bobcat soon tired of hunting, George said, and it lay down to take a nap, spending altogether an hour or more just outside his door.

Last week I read in The West Marin Citizen that at this time of year, female blacktail deer form “clans” while the males are “solitary.” Apparently, the word hasn’t reached this buck yet because in recent weeks, he’s been grazing with the fawns and females on my property. Or maybe he considers himself above the law of nature.

Back in 2004 when West Marin Citizen editor Jim Kravets was news editor of The Point Reyes Light, he wrote in an editorial that The Light was “reluctantly” endorsing Carole Migden for the State Senate. “Voters,” he wrote, “like their legislators to be leaders, have good judgment, and act decisively… Carole Migden does all of this.”

However, Jim also noted, “voters would like their state senators to be approachable, receptive, or at least slow down as they drive past constituents. Carole Migden does none of the above.” This second observation has now turned out to be remarkably prescient.

Trinka Marris of Inverness Park (standing beside the state senator) heads the Save the White Deer campaign, and she invited many of us who also oppose the Point Reyes National Seashore’s slaughter of fallow and axis deer to come to her house last Saturday for a party to meet Migden.

Unfortunately, the majority of guests had little chance to spend much time discussing their concerns with Migden. Instead they mostly had to content themselves with listening to a loud, brash, sometimes-witty, and sometimes-abrasive performance by their state senator.

Addressing the party, State Senator Migden, who is openly lesbian, told the guests right off that she is also Jewish, from New York, and represents, along with Marin, “east San Francisco, the part you enjoy.” That part, she added, includes the Mission District and the Embarcadero but “not the Avenues” (the Sunset and Richmond districts). Coming from a legislator, her bluntness seemed both refreshing and gratuitous.

The local press was represented at the party by The Point Reyes Light, The West Marin Citizen, and this blog. Midgen playfully posed for pictures riding a rocking horse and later used a West Marin Citizen photo of this on her website — but said she didn’t want the stuff she was saying quoted in the press.

While she clearly didn’t mind being photographed, Migden (at left) said news articles too often make her look bad by getting her comments wrong or presenting them out of context. Whether press reports on Migden have been right or wrong, it is perfectly understandable why the state senator has been uncomfortable with them.

One reason The Light three years ago endorsed Migden only “reluctantly” was her behavior in October 2004 during a candidates’ debate with Republican opponent Andrew Felder. Sponsoring the debate was the San Rafael Chamber of Commerce. As San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross wrote at the time:

“It started when Migden’s staff asked that the debate schedule be reshuffled because she had to leave early. Organizers did so, only to have Migden show up late. When she finally did arrive, Migden stayed outside in the hall and sent word that she wouldn’t join the proceedings until Felder was done.

“Upon taking the stage, the ever-blunt Migden informed moderator Dick Spotswood that she had come a long way, so forget about the time limit on answers. The capper came at the end when she chose to ignore the extended hand of her opponent. Not once, but twice.

“The audience was just aghast,” said chamber president and CEO Elissa Gambastiani. “You could have heard a pin drop,” said Marin Association of Realtors vice president Edward Segal, a fellow Democrat and former press secretary for the notoriously gruff John Burton.

“‘Was she this arrogant in San Francisco?’ Gambastiani asked. To be honest, yes. Migden has long been known as hell on high heels. The New York native cut her teeth in the-rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco politics, then spent eight years as one of the most-aggressive liberal legislators in the state.”

As a motorist, Migden can likewise be hell on wheels. This past Aug. 10, the state senator pled no contest to reckless driving charges, stemming from a three-vehicle collision on Interstate 80 in Fairfield last May. The accident sent a Vallejo motorist’s three-year-old daughter to the hospital.

The day after Migden was fined $710 and put on two years’ probation, CBS 5 and the Associated Press reported that “State Senator Carole Migden [had] caused a panic among fellow drivers last May when she drove out of control in her state-issued SUV for 30 miles on Interstate 80, according to [just-then-released] 911 tapes.

“A series of callers between Berkeley and Fairfield, where Migden’s wild ride finally ended… described her as coming perilously close to hitting other vehicles, weaving back and forth across multiple lanes of traffic, and careening repeatedly off the center median barrier.

“One caller described motorists putting on their vehicles’ hazard lights in an apparent attempt to warn others away from Migden’s Toyota Highlander hybrid. Another caller feared she was drunk.” One woman thinking Migden’s car was being driven by a man, frantically told a 911 dispatcher, “He’s like, he’s been weaving in and out of lanes. He almost hit the back of our car, and then he sped up and almost hit another car. He’s driving real fast right now and, oh, my God, he’s about to hit another car.”

Another caller to 911 told the dispatcher, “I’ve witnessed her hit the center divide already once. She’s been crossing three lanes at a time, wandering back and forth. She’s been on the phone, reading a book. She’s doing about 80. She’s really scary, watch out!” In all, the 911 dispatcher in 27 minutes received nine such calls from five motorists.

After the collision, Migden told CBS 5 she had been diagnosed with leukemia 10 years ago and that her daily medication may have been to blame for her bad driving. I personally was certainly sorry to learn about the state senator’s leukemia, but would her medicine really cause her to drive 80 mph in traffic while intermittently reading and talking on the phone? After all, Migden was a leader of the movement in the Legislature to outlaw the use of cell phones while driving. How easily does one forget?

While Migden didn’t want her comments to some members of the public on Saturday to be reported to other members of the public later, I will reveal that when she addressed guests at the party, she: 1) told a couple of concerned women she’ll look into a state plan that would allow the labeling of pasteurized almonds as “fresh”; 2) told four of us who raised the issue that she would sit in on the Bay Area congressional delegation’s discussions of the park’s deer-eradication program, but do little else, saying that probably nothing will change until 2009 when our Republican president and governor are out of office; 3) listened for a while to Marshall activist Donna Sheehan’s concerns about chemical pollution of the environment, and then faded out on her.

Although Donna seemed pleased to at least momentarily get the state senator’s ear, this ending to Migden’s performance became too embarrassing for me to watch. I went outside to smoke my pipe and talk with Mark Dowie of Inverness (just back from Africa) and Richard Kirschman of Dogtown (who said Save the White Deer has already lined up different influential people to champion its cause).

When the party was over, I left longing for those happy days of yore when West Marin was represented by the genteel State Senator Peter Behr. Somehow Behr managed to remain a class act while pushing major bills (e.g. his Wild and Scenic Rivers Act) through the Legislature. Alas, those days are apparently gone in Sacramento.

Bolinas residents watch private companies skim oil offshore after being told by sheriff’s deputies that they themselves were prohibited from cleaning up bunker oil that had washed up on the town’s beach. Some townspeople, however, concluded saving wildlife was more important than obeying a deputy.

There are many lessons to be learned from Nov. 7’s 58,000-gallon oil spill in San Francisco Bay. The spill occurred when the container-cargo ship Cosco Busan struck the fender of a Bay Bridge tower, tearing a 100-foot-long gash in its hull.

By now oil from the spill has drifted out the Golden Gate and traveled as far up the coast as Point Reyes and as far down the coast as Montara Beach in San Mateo County. Near Point Reyes, Drake’s Bay Oyster Company has had to stop harvesting and has said it could go out of business.

This week The San Francisco Chronicle reported that as of Monday approximately 2,150 seabirds had been found dead or had died at rescue centers, leading ornithologists to believe the real death toll is closer to 12,500 birds.

Ornithologists now warn that patches of bunker oil can be expected to wash up on coastal beaches for months to come. The toll on birds could get significantly worse, they note, because so many migratory birds winter here. Citing a lack of “resources,” federal and state scientists on Wednesday said they have already given up on trying to save roughly 250 oiled birds now dying on the Farallon Islands.

Whose interests were served when a National Park Service ranger stopped a Muir Beach resident from cleaning oil globs off the town’s beach: nature’s, the resident’s, the Park Service’s, or this government-hired cleanup company’s? (Photo by Gustav Adam)

For West Marin residents, the spill provided fresh evidence of the need to shake up the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service as soon as President Bush leaves office. From the Point Reyes National Seashore, to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area to Yosemite National Park, Pacific West Region law-enforcement rangers have in recent years become notorious for bullying and otherwise abusing well-intentioned members of the public.

The Marin Independent Journal two weeks ago quoted Muir Beach resident Sigward Moser as saying that on Nov. 9, he was threatened with a Taser gun, forced to the ground and handcuffed by a National Park Service ranger for refusing to stop cleaning up the oily beach beneath his home.

Moser, a 45-year-old communications consultant, said he was forced to sprawl handcuffed on the wet sand for an hour before he was released and given two misdemeanor citations, one for entering an emergency area and another for refusing a “lawful” order [to stop his volunteer work]. “It was pretty wet and uncomfortable,” he said.”

Wearing protective gloves, Moser, a member of the Muir Beach Disaster Council, and a group of novice Buddhist monks from the Zen Center had already removed 3.5 tons of oil globs from the beach when he was arrested.

Why didn’t the ranger want Moser there? The federal government, as usual, was paying private corporations to do public work, and volunteers by the thousands were turned away from Bay Area beaches. Public safety was a concern but one that was grossly overblown.

Volunteers were at first told they would need 40 hours of training before they would be allowed to help. Eventually, the amount of training required for most volunteers around the Bay Area was reduced to four hours, but many volunteers were then told to go home and wait to see if they’d be needed in a month.

Numerous townspeople ignored deputies’ orders and proceeded to clean large amounts of oil off Bolinas Beach. Unlike National Park Service law enforcement, sheriff’s deputies declined to arrest or manhandle good Samaritans and let them do their work. Here Mark Butler dumps a bag of rags used to sop up oil into a truck owned by Nidal Khalili of Bolinas (left) and his partner Joy Conway. Khalili and Conway planned to take the bags to a staging area in Stinson Beach. Coming off the beach at right is Walter Hoffman, who had just spent hours cleaning oil off sand and rocks.

Marin County officials in their perniciously precious way at first resisted the shortened training program. A sheriff’s spokesman told The Independent Journal there was concern within his office as to whether “a four-hour training program [is] enough to ensure public safety.”

Come on now! The main risks from bunker oil to volunteers on the beach are rashes (if they get it on their skin) and nausea (if they eat it). Casual contact is virtually never fatal, which is why many oily seabirds survive if they’re cleaned. In fact, volunteers have been told that everyday Dawn dish soap is good for removing oil from both birds and one’s own skin. A West Marin plumber, who has worked with chemicals far more dangerous than bunker oil, grumbled this week, “Twenty minutes of training would be enough.”

Particularly irritated by private companies being in charge of the cleanup effort was Stinson Beach Fire Chief Kenny Stephens. One cleanup company called Clean Bay had regularly practiced at Bolinas Lagoon, but it never showed up, Stephens noted. Finally a company call NRC arrived (above) “four days late and about 40 people short,” he added. NRC was supposed to string a boom across the Bolinas Lagoon channel but didn’t know what to do.

Stinson Beach and Bolinas residents during the much larger oil spill of 1971 had figured out how to erect a wooden boom across the channel mouth to keep oil out of the lagoon. NCR, however, tried to use foam-filled booms that broke every time the tide came in, even though Bolinas and Stinson Beach residents had already determined such booms (as seen here) wouldn’t hold up. After the fifth boom broke, NCR gave up.

The volunteers above are on Kent Island within the lagoon. At the time, mired birds but no floating oil had come in off the ocean, although it has by now.

Bolinas fisherman and other local residents, are familiar with currents and the contours of the channel, the fire chief said. However, he added, those running the cleanup “didn’t put local knowledge to use.” Residents wanted to get involved, “but our hands were tied,” Chief Stephens said. The only outside official who initially worked with the two towns, he added, was Brian Sanders of Marin Parks and Open Space.

Northern California oil-spill-cleanup teams were so unprepared for even this medium-sized spill that “they’re tapped out of boom material,” Stephens said with amazement. The chief credited Sanders with “doing a great job locating lots of stuff” for Bolinas and Stinson Beach to use in trying to contain the floating oil.

On Nov. 11, the Bolinas Fire Department held a community meeting in which residents complained about members of the public not getting official cooperation when they cleaned oil from beaches.

Meanwhile in Congress, the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Marine Transportation on Nov. 19 questioned the Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board about six concerns in particular, The Chronicle reported:

Whether the pilot should have attempted to leave port in heavy fog when he had doubts about the ship’s radar.

Whether the pilot of the Cosco Busan was wrong in relying on the ship’s captain to interpret an electronic-chart system with which the pilot wasn’t familiar.

Whether there was a language problem between the local pilot and the Chinese crew.

Whether the Coast Guard should have warned the pilot sooner that the ship was heading toward a bridge tower.

Whether the tugboat accompanying the Cosco Busan could have been used to avoid the collision.

Whether freighters, like tanker ships, need double hulls.

Congressional leaders, however, were unhappy with the answers they got from the Coast Guard and especially the National Transportation Safety Board, which said it would need a year to figure out what had happened.

Irritated that the Coast Guard and the California Department of Fish & Game are now responsible for investigating their own behavior in the wake of the spill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remarked, “I don’t think they have the credibility to self-examine or self-investigate.” Pelosi, a member of the subcommittee, said Congress has now asked the inspector general of Homeland Security to conduct a separate probe.

The Department of Homeland Security, like the occupation of Iraq, is unfortunately a cornerstone of the Bush Administration’s “War on Terror.” Already the California Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Save the Bay, and the Sierra Club have warned that the Coast Guard’s new emphasis on “homeland security” may be hampering its ability to cope with an oil spill. (Remember when there was a shortage of National Guardsmen to help Hurricane Katrina victims because so many guardsmen had been sent to Iraq?)

Coast Guard Rear Admiral Craig Bone told the House subcommittee the cleanup has “exceeded expectations” and is “one of the most successful cleanups I’ve ever experienced.”

But it was typical government BS. Stung by widespread criticism that it had waited too long before trying to contain the spill, the Coast Guard had already replaced the regional commander, Capt. William Uberti (left). Capt. Paul Gugg is the new Bay Area region commander and is now in charge of the Coast Guard’s part of the cleanup. Photo by Gustav Adam